Ep. 742: Alpha-Gal, Timber Management, and Oozing Velvet Bucks | MeatEater Radio Live!

Summary

The MeatEater Podcast
Episode: Ep. 742: Alpha-Gal, Timber Management, and Oozing Velvet Bucks
Release Date: August 1, 2025

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Introduction

In Episode 742 of The MeatEater Podcast, host Clay Newcomb and co-hosts Brent Reeves and Tony Peterson delve into pressing outdoor topics, blending personal anecdotes with expert interviews. This episode offers listeners an engaging exploration of Alpha-Gal syndrome, timber management challenges, and memorable hunting experiences, all while fostering a sense of community through listener interactions and contests.

Personal Updates from Co-Hosts

Brent Reeves shared his excitement about an upcoming moose hunt in northern Manitoba, Canada. He aims to complete the hunt using an archery bow, aspiring to fill his freezer with moose meat. Brent humorously noted, “[Brent Reeves: 04:56]... the ultimate goal is to fill the freezer. Second goal will be to do it with archery.”

Tony Peterson discussed his recent ventures into bear hunting in Minnesota, highlighting the challenges and joys of including his daughters in the hunt. He expressed mixed feelings about shifting his hunting focus but emphasized the importance of family involvement: “[Tony Peterson: 07:14]... this is the lightest lift to get there that I've ever had for a bear hunt... my daughters are just geeked up to hunt bears.”

Interview with Ronnie Cohen: Understanding Alpha-Gal Syndrome

Clay introduced Ronnie Cohen, a Tennessee wildlife biologist diagnosed with Alpha-Gal syndrome, a tick-borne illness causing severe allergies to mammalian meat.

• What is Alpha-Gal? Ronnie explained, “[Tony Peterson: 16:03]... Alpha Gal is an allergen to a carbohydrate in red meat. It's an allergen to all mammalian meat, so anything with fur or that gives milk is off-limits.”

• Impact on His Life: Ronnie recounted his first severe reaction, which included difficulty breathing and a cold sweat, leading him to seek medical attention. “[Tony Peterson: 16:42]... it was really life-changing... every meal had meat, so I had to reshape my diet and hunting practices.”

• Current Management and Hunting Practices: Despite his condition, Ronnie continues to hunt deer with assistance from friends, though he faces challenges when processing harvested animals. He transitioned to duck hunting, finding fulfillment in teaching others despite his altered hunting methods. “[Tony Peterson: 21:09]... I still deer hunt and deer hunt with friends. But it’s hard to change how I hunt.”

• Potential Treatments: The discussion touched on alternative treatments like acupuncture, with Ronnie expressing uncertainty about their efficacy: “[Tony Peterson: 22:29]... my friends swear by it, but I don’t know if it’s actually working for Alpha-Gal.”

Timber Management with Each Stewart: The Public Timber Project

Each Stewart, director of the Public Timber Project in Arkansas, shared insights into the challenges facing public land duck hunting.

• Challenges in Arkansas: Each highlighted issues such as overcrowded boat ramps and inadequate facilities, leading to environmental degradation. “[Each Stewart: 50:38]... last season... a thousand trucks and boat trailers lined up...no trash services, no porta-potties.”

• Changing Demographics: He observed a shift from seasoned hunters mentoring the younger generation to reliance on online resources, causing a dilution of traditional hunting knowledge. “[Each Stewart: 56:36]... these young fellows are getting into duck hunting... learning everything from YouTube, making the culture shift.”

• Public Timber Project Initiatives: To combat these issues, the project organizes cleanups and promotes positive community engagement through social media campaigns. “[Each Stewart: 59:55]... duck hunters clean up your local area... positive images from the duck hunting community.”

Throwback Thursday: Hunting Memories

The hosts reminisced with a Throwback Thursday segment, sharing historical hunting photos and stories:

• Brent Reeves showcased a photo of his great-grandfather, Lovett Reeves, in the mid-1950s, highlighting family hunting traditions. “[Brent Reeves: 37:13]... That would be six generations... introduced case knives into our family.”

• Clay Newcomb shared a personal anecdote about a chased coyote pup, emphasizing the unpredictable nature of hunting and family adventures. “[Clay Newcomb: 44:21]... we kept a coyote for a week... became the 'hero dad' with a captured pup.”

Multi Trail Camera Contest

In collaboration with Moultrie, the podcast hosted a trail camera photo contest:

• Contest Details: Listeners submitted photos themed around velvet bucks. The prize included Moultrie Edge 3 cameras, gift cards, and a signature mini trapper knife. “[Phil: 62:32]... winner will receive two Edge 2 First Light Spectre Camo Edition multi cameras...”

• Photo Highlights: Four standout photos were reviewed, including a majestic big buck from Andrew Molino, an action shot of a mule deer jumping a rattlesnake, an impressive albino buck photographed by C.K. Nugetson, and a shed velvet buck during its brief transition period.

• Winner Announcement: Chad Knutson's albino buck photo won the contest, earning him the prize package. “[Clay Newcomb: 68:03]... Congratulations, Chad.”

Listener Feedback

The episode featured an interactive segment where listeners posed questions:

• Getting Daughters into Hunting: Tony advised involving children in meaningful activities like setting up blinds and participating in the hunt, fostering a connection to nature without pressure to hunt: “[Tony Peterson: 29:39]... make it special, leave them wanting more.”

• Cooking Wild Meat Substitutions: Freddie Rick inquired about replacing squirrels with jackrabbits in recipes. The hosts suggested experimenting with preparation methods, albeit with cautious optimism. “[Brent Reeves: 75:30]... frame. Powder his behind with buttermilk and flour...”

• Bear Grease Hall of Fame: Clay responded to inquiries about the Bear Grease Hall of Fame, emphasizing its organic and prestigious nature: “[Clay Newcomb: 76:54]... honored legends like Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett... we wait for the next legend to be inducted.”

• Training Older Dogs for Hunting: Tony encouraged training dogs of any age, highlighting that older dogs can learn new skills with appropriate training methods: “[Tony Peterson: 77:25]... teach that eight-year-old lab... it'll learn what to do.”

Upcoming Book Announcement

Clay Newcomb revealed progress on his forthcoming book about the American Black Bear, promising a unique and comprehensive biography that "blows your mind." “[Clay Newcomb: 74:49]... it's the bio of the American Black Bear told like it's never been told before.”

Conclusion

Clay Newcomb wrapped up the episode by expressing gratitude to guests and listeners, emphasizing the importance of conservation and maintaining wild spaces. The hosts encouraged continued community involvement and announced plans for future episodes, ensuring the podcast remains a valuable resource for outdoor enthusiasts.

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Notable Quotes:

• Clay Newcomb [07:48]: "That's kind of caught me off guard because bears haven't always been my thing."

• Tony Peterson [16:03]: "Alpha Gal is an allergen to a carbohydrate in red meat. It's an allergen to all mammalian meat."

• Each Stewart [56:36]: "We're seeing our culture shift... traditions and the ways we used to hunt... erosion and change."

• Clay Newcomb [74:49]: "It's the bio of the American Black Bear told like it's never been told before."

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This episode of The MeatEater Podcast offers a profound look into the intersection of personal health challenges, environmental stewardship, and evolving hunting traditions. Through heartfelt stories and actionable insights, Clay Newcomb and his co-hosts foster a deeper appreciation for the natural world and the communities that cherish it.

Transcript

[Clay Newcomb]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Jake Hofer]

You've got the land, you've got the deer. But the season's closing in and your mind's racing with more questions than answers. I'm Jake Hofer and this is back 40, a limited series show on Wire to Hunt, part of Meat Eaters podcast network. Each episode I'll be asking eight whitetail hunting pros a focused, thought provoking question about hunting and land management. How do I hunt the best part of the farm with less than ideal access?

[Brent Reeves]

Should you? That's what the real question is.

[Tony Peterson]

Stand without good access is not a good stand.

[Jake Hofer]

Search Wire to Hunt and hit that follow button to listen to back 40 now.

[Phil]

Smell us now, lady.

[Clay Newcomb]

Welcome to Meat Eater Trivia. Meat Eater Podcast. Welcome everybody to Meat Eater Radio Live. Welcome to Meat Eater Radio Live. I'm your host today, Clay Newcomb, straight out of Arkansas and I'm pretty sure this will, this will rank up there with the top media radio lives maybe of all time because of my co hosts Brent Reeves and Tony Peterson. Great to see you boys.

[Unknown]

Great.

[Clay Newcomb]

What's going on, Brent?

[Brent Reeves]

It's great to be here, man.

[Clay Newcomb]

Are you happy to be here? Why are you here? Why am I here?

[Brent Reeves]

Because our boss told us to come here.

[Clay Newcomb]

Right. So we're in Bozeman this week and Tony's in Bozeman. We're, we're like that, we're a little bit of the, of the, what do you call it when you know, we're like the extensions of media that live out in the real world out there.

[Brent Reeves]

Yeah, we live in Fort Arkansas. You live in.

[Unknown]

We are definitely a touch point to real people where we live and what we do.

[Clay Newcomb]

Tell us, where do you live, Tony?

[Unknown]

I live in just central Minnesota.

[Clay Newcomb]

Central Minnesota.

[Unknown]

Far cry from Bozeman.

[Clay Newcomb]

Did you know that bears in Minnesota have the largest in the expanding ranges between the eastern deciduous forest and the, in the, and the Great Plains. Minnesota black bears have the largest documented home ranges of any bears in North America.

[Unknown]

Black bears, I didn't know that, but.

[Clay Newcomb]

I believe that there's some, there's some bores that have 400 square mile home ranges.

[Brent Reeves]

Holy cow.

[Unknown]

Yeah, I'll tell you what I live, I live in the suburbs just north of the cities. When everybody started getting ring cameras and all these next door Facebook things pages and stuff like that, the amount of awareness of black bears just general population stuff went through the roof. Crazy. They're everywhere.

[Clay Newcomb]

Crazy. Well, I'm going to give you a chance in just a second to introduce yourself, Brent. But on today's show. We are in Montana and we're going to interview a Tennessee wildlife biologist who's been diagnosed with alpha gal which is a major deal, really interesting tick borne illness. And we're going to take you way back to a throwback Thursday, one of the Meat Eater Live favorites. We've got some great photos from Tony Britt and I that have never been shown before, never will be shown again, will be deleted off the Internet after this. These are these kind of photos folks. We're going to show those. Then we're going to go back to talk with the director of the public timber project each Stewart and finally we're going to wrap up with a multi trail camera contest, velvet contest and.

[Brent Reeves]

Also we'll be talking to Ronnie Cohen who is.

[Clay Newcomb]

Yeah. Tennessee wildlife biologist.

[Brent Reeves]

Oh, is that you? You did that?

[Clay Newcomb]

Yeah, I said that like about 10 seconds ago.

[Brent Reeves]

Oh, that's an echo. I wasn't listening.

[Clay Newcomb]

Yeah, so, so that's going to be great. And then we're going to go back and get some listener questions. So we really appreciate everybody signing on and we're going to, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna talk to everybody online. It's really cool to have everybody there. So Brent Reeves, sir. Man, what have you been doing? What's, what are you excited about?

[Brent Reeves]

I'm excited. I'm getting ready for a big hunt in northern Canada, in Manitoba in September. Just finished a project just about a month ago in Kansas on some decoy, decoy dog stuff with coats. Now I'm getting ready to go on this, this moose hunt. Absolute dream hunt for me, archery moose hunt. But I'm, I may, I may take a, have a rifle and back up we get to the ninth inning and we ain't got any meat in the, in the freezer because I am counting on. I had a piece of moose steak that, that you cooked from one of the ones that you killed and it's fabulous. So the ultimate goal is to fill the freezer. Second goal will be to do it with archery.

[Clay Newcomb]

Tony, I'll tell you what I told Brent and I don't, I really don't want to influence him in any unnatural way. But I've decided on the big, big hunts in wild country that I've never been in that are kind of like these once in a lifetime, once in three decade type trips to take a bow. Which a bow is what I've gravitated towards since I was a kid. That's what I typically want to do is bow hunt. And I have Taken a bow on some of those trips, and I find that rather enjoying this wild country that I'm in for 10 days of my life. I'm thinking about the limiting factor, that hunt, which is trying to get within 40 yards of that animal and kill it with a boat, rather than enjoying being there. So I. The older I get, the more I'm kind of, like, less interested in the weapon on a hunt like that. Now, if I'm hunting somewhere else, I might be like, I'm taking a bow. Do you understand what I'm saying?

[Unknown]

I absolutely understand what you're saying.

[Clay Newcomb]

What do you think?

[Unknown]

It's just different strokes, man. Like, I. I wouldn't. People ask me about moose hunting all the time. I wouldn't moose hunt with anything other than a bow. Just like, for me personally, that's what I'd want to do. But I get. I absolutely get why you would do. Or you would have that backup rifle with you. And to your point, Clay, I find myself, even though, like, I just. I just love bow hunting more than anything, but I find myself more and more where I'm like, I just want to be someplace really special. Like, I don't care about going here because I can kill a big one here or whatever. It's like, I want to be in those places before I get too old. And so, you know, the weapon choice for me is, like, it's just kind of set in stone. I don't know why. I'm just. That's just the way I am. But the important thing, it's the same thing as you're talking about. Like, I want that experience. I want to be in those places.

[Clay Newcomb]

Yep. Yep.

[Brent Reeves]

It's a big part of it. I'm just looking forward to it. I'm going with some good folks. Craig McCarthy, North Mountain Adventures. And I mean, those folks, I killed a bear with them last year, big old chocolate bear, and they're just good folks. They actually came down, went coon hunting with us. Whole family. Just good folks. Good folks. Where you went with me?

[Unknown]

What's that?

[Brent Reeves]

Where you went with me down. And they came.

[Unknown]

Oh, right, right, right.

[Brent Reeves]

Dr. Camp. Yeah.

[Clay Newcomb]

So that's the hunt you're excited about, Tony, what's the. What's the hunt this fall you're excited about?

[Unknown]

Honestly, this is going to be a little crazy, but I picked up permission to. To bear hunt in Minnesota in this. On this property that's only an hour from my house. So the lightest lift to get there that I've ever had for a bear hunt. You Know, for a do it yourself deal. And I'm not going to hunt them, but my daughters, you know, one of my daughters shot one in Wisconsin last year. One of them hunted Wisconsin, didn't get one. And so this is a no quota zone. We won't have big bears, but we should have some to work with. And I'm, like, weirdly excited about that because both of my daughters are just geeked up to hunt bears, probably because they know I'm going to pull them out of school the first week of school or first two, you know. Yeah, they're going to get some vacation time early for this. But that. That one is kind of caught me off guard because bears haven't always been my thing. But when my daughters want to hunt them, man, it's fun.

[Clay Newcomb]

Yeah. That's cool. You always say that. It always surprises me because you're known as the whitetail guy. So I always think you're going to be like, oh, this tag that I got here, there. And like, almost every year I talk to you, you tell me something about a bear, and I'm like, I mean, I want to hear some comments. Do you think Tony's feeding me what I want to hear? Is he feeding Clay Newcomb what Clay Newcomb wants to hear, or is he being honest with the world?

[Brent Reeves]

He said, I want to hear your.

[Clay Newcomb]

Comments there, how authentic that was. I. I think he's telling the truth.

[Unknown]

Well, I mean, when you do what we do for a job. And like, I love the whitetail hunts. I have a. I'm gonna go try to decoy one in. In late October in western North Dakota, which is a place I just love to hunt.

[Clay Newcomb]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

And so I'm excited about that. But we sort of take whitetail hunts for granted because we do a lot of them. And that's just like such an omnipresent part of your life. So anything that I can deviate, that's just different.

[Clay Newcomb]

Right.

[Unknown]

If I can deviate outside of it. And I just. I feel like I learn a lot when I bear hunt because I'm not very good at. Same thing with duck hunting. When I go duck hunting, I'm like, I'm not very good at this, and I just enjoy it because I'm figuring.

[Clay Newcomb]

Stuff out of it.

[Unknown]

Absolutely.

[Clay Newcomb]

Kind of the novelty of it. Yeah. So I was with Brett and Tony all week. We're here at the. At the. The Meat eater go to market meeting for the. For the year. So we've been seeing all the new first light products that are coming out FHF Gear products, Dave Smith decoy stuff, Phelps stuff. We've been seeing all that. And I heard Brent the other day casually talking to Tony, who he's known for, like, a very long time, and Brent was like, hey, how's Wisconsin? And Tony's like, I don't know. I don't live in Wisconsin, but Minnesota is great.

[Brent Reeves]

That's not even close.

[Clay Newcomb]

And.

[Brent Reeves]

And not even close.

[Clay Newcomb]

That's pretty much what happened. No, well, you got the state mixed up. Okay? People do this with. With us in the South. They're like, yeah, you're from Mississippi, right? And I'm like, no, I'm not from Mississippi. And I'm like, Arkansas? And they go, oh, yeah. I mean, it's kind of the same, right? How many of you online do that between the Great Lakes states and the Southern states? Like, if you just kind of get it right that Tony's from somewhere up there, it's okay. And, you know, how many. Like, which one do you get more confused with? Because I probably would have done the same thing, Tony. They're kind of all the same.

[Unknown]

So I'm from Minnesota, and we have Steve from Michigan, Mark from Michigan. We have a lot of. A lot of dudes here from Michigan. People.

[Clay Newcomb]

Okay, Michigan and Minnesota, but I don't.

[Unknown]

Take offense to that. I don't care at all. But I wondered if somebody says, oh, you're from Mississippi. Does that, like, make your blood boil?

[Clay Newcomb]

Or you like, hey, listen, the. The states like Arkansas and Mississippi that are at the bottom of the pile for every single thing bu Built into our culture is an insecurity complex. I mean, it's like a. It's like a. It's like a sociological thing. We're built with it. That's why we're so passionate about the Razorbacks. It's like the only thing we've got. So if you try to staple me to another state, I'm like, dude, the only thing I got is this tape. That's all I got going for me. How.

[Unknown]

How much do you two think that you've personally elevated Arkansas just being from there?

[Brent Reeves]

The governor probably has a warrant out for our arrest. Probably. I don't know. I think we probably. We brought some eyes on Arkansas. We had. Matter of fact, we had some guy contact us, sent us an email that because of the stuff he was listening to on Bear Grease in this Country Life, they were moving to Arkansas.

[Clay Newcomb]

Don't say that.

[Brent Reeves]

So we can all.

[Clay Newcomb]

Terrible.

[Brent Reeves]

I sent him an email, said, don't do that. We were lying.

[Unknown]

Don't come did you ask him if he's heard of Bozeman?

[Clay Newcomb]

You should. Bozeman's a great talent. It is. All right, well, I can't wait to see you guys photos. It's great.

[Brent Reeves]

Is that next?

[Clay Newcomb]

No, it's not. But we are going to interview Ronnie Cohen Cowan. Ronnie is. I'll let him introduce himself, but Ronnie is in Tennessee and we're going to talk with him about what he does, but specifically about Alpha Gal, which is a tick borne illness, which for years I've always told my kids, I was like, I'm more afraid of ticks than am snakes. You know, when I was a kid, it was the snakes that our moms were scared of. Today it's the ticks.

[Brent Reeves]

Because with good reason.

[Clay Newcomb]

They're way more consequential, really. But if we could get Ronnie up. Hey, Ronnie, can you hear us?

[Tony Peterson]

Yes, sir. Can you hear me?

[Clay Newcomb]

Yes. Hey, Ronnie, man, look at where you're. Tell us where you're standing. What do you got out in front of you there, Ronnie?

[Tony Peterson]

Yeah. So I'm at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. We're here at our UT Gardens. It's a demonstration garden. We have native plant species, ornamentals that's very popular. And we do a lot of dendrology. I. I hung tree stands out here. I do a lot of hunter advocacy and hunting skills education. And I'm standing behind Smokey 4 here. He is our school mascot. And I have a freezer queen here to my right that we teach shot placement. And we do a little bit of waterfowl stuff too, in Tennessee. So I bought some teaching aid.

[Clay Newcomb]

Oh, man. So the Blue Tick, though, is a permanent. Is that a permanent statue there?

[Tony Peterson]

Yes, sir.

[Clay Newcomb]

Okay.

[Tony Peterson]

Sir. We have statues of the, of Smokey all around the campus. This happens to be Smokey 4. We're all the way up to the, to the young teens here for our official real mascot, the Smokey Dog. I think we're on 12 or 13. We've had several, but he is our official mascot here at the university.

[Clay Newcomb]

I love it, man. Every time I see that blue tick come out, I get fired up a fire. If I had a team other than the Razorbacks, it would be the Tennessee Vols.

[Tony Peterson]

I mean, I just appreciate that.

[Clay Newcomb]

It's true, it's true. I was, I tailgated there last year at one of the big games with Brent.

[Brent Reeves]

Yep, it was a lot of fun. Matter of fact, we saw Ronnie there.

[Clay Newcomb]

Oh, that's right. We met Ronnie, didn't we?

[Brent Reeves]

Yeah. I actually coon hunted with Ronnie and he can't he and some of his friends came down and hunted with me and Michael at. At the duck camp. And that's. That's when Ronnie told me about contracting Alpha Gal. And it's. It's interesting, too, because of his job. He's a wildlife biologist and he's with the extension service, and they do a lot of educational stuff with kids there in Tennessee. And Ronnie's always out in the field teaching stuff to kids and stuff, and he's having to deal with this Alpha Gal. And I thought it'd be interesting to have Ronnie on here to talk about how it's changed his life.

[Clay Newcomb]

Yeah. How did you. How long have you had it, Ronnie?

[Tony Peterson]

I'm sorry, what was that, Clay?

[Clay Newcomb]

How long have you had Alpha Gal?

[Tony Peterson]

Yeah, I've had the Alpha Gal for about two and a half, close to three years now. And I contracted it, what I suspect to be during early archer season. Pulled a bunch of ticks off of me. And it's the Lone Star tick that messes you up there down here in the south. And I suspect that it came from that area because I was getting a bunch of ticks on me. But Branch Rod, I'm out in the field a lot. I'm an outdoor recreation specialist, so I was. So I'm in the woods a lot. And, you know, if you recreate south, you come in contact 6 all the time.

[Clay Newcomb]

Was the tick. I've always heard that it's got to be on you for like over eight hours before you can get any kind of infection from the tick. Is that true?

[Tony Peterson]

I'm not sure. That's what I've heard, too. I'm not. I don't specialize in ticks or anything, unfortunately. I just contracted this allergen, but, yeah, I have heard that too.

[Clay Newcomb]

Okay.

[Tony Peterson]

And, you know, I try to take care of that and pull them off, but, you know, it's real easy to get those ticks that you can't see, and they're not always real detectable. So, yeah, if that is true, that. That makes you feel a little bit better.

[Clay Newcomb]

What is. What's the Internet say? Yeah, Brent's gonna look at that. Well, tell us. Tell us what Alpha Gal is for somebody that might not know and how it's affected you, Ronnie.

[Tony Peterson]

Yeah. So Alpha Gal is an allergen to a carbohydrate in a million meat. There's a lot of misinformation out there that I have found because it's such a new thing. Some people call it just a red meat allergen. But actually alpha gal is an allergen to all mammalian meat. So anything with fur or gives milk, you can't eat meat from it. So one night I had a really bad reaction. I don't know how to explain it other than having lizard skin. Woke up in a cold sweat and couldn't hardly breathe and didn't know what was going on. Took a cold shower, I took some Benadryl and Benadryl puts me to sleep. So I was able to get through that, knew I needed help, went to the doctor and they got me into an allergist. By the time I got to see a specialist, I had my second reaction. It was very similar, but with some bad stomach issues and eventually got into the allergist and they were asking questions and he, he would say, you know, have you heard of alpha gal? And I said, yeah, I'm a wildlife biologist and I do a lot in the outdoors. I've heard of that. But I eat red meat every day and I don't think that's it. He said, well, we're going to test you anyways. And they did an official blood panel and at that particular clinic, they said that I had the highest levels of that allergen that they've ever seen. I was living in Florida at the time, coming back up here in Tennessee and recreating. And so that was really kind of life changing for me, being a biologist. And every meal that I eat had some kind of meat in it. So it's really life changing and really hard to kind of mold around that. And it changed how I hunted and, and everything after finding that news out.

[Clay Newcomb]

How do you eat now, Ronnie? Like you can eat, you can eat chicken, birds, fish. Is that the kind of protein you can eat?

[Tony Peterson]

Yeah. So poultry, seafood and fish, you know, I eat a lot of. And I tell my wife if I ever get over this, I'll never eat fried chicken sandwiches again. Because if you're on the road, that's not the only fast food you have. But luckily, you know, poultry is pretty good. I do like seafood, but I do miss red meat and pork. And I just about giving up breakfast because it's hard to have a good breakfast without sausage and bacon. So I do a protein bar now and out the door.

[Clay Newcomb]

Will you ever shed the allergy? Because I've heard of it kind of going up and going down inside of people. Do you think you'll ever shed it?

[Tony Peterson]

Yeah, I have heard of people getting over it. And the allergist that I have seen here in Tennessee, they claim that you can build a tolerance to it, just like any allergen that sometimes it leaves, but other individuals have it for the rest of their life. It really depends on the person, and I think they need to do some more research on it. But yeah, it can come and go and there's different avenues. There's no medicine for it that I'm aware of. There's some holistic approaches with acupuncture and things that I've not tried. Some people swear by it, but I've not been told how that affects allergen to a sugar molecule. But, you know, it was a big deal to me because I'm in the deer woods. I target deer species a lot in my hunting, and when I would harvest the deer, just the raw blood would bother me, you know.

[Clay Newcomb]

So are you deer hunting at all? Are you deer hunting at all now?

[Tony Peterson]

So, yeah, I still deer hunt and I deer hunt with friends. And so if I do harvest one, and I've got some really good friends, when I harvest one, they help me with it. And it, for some reason, the or the raw blood breaks me out. And alpha gal, what's strange about it, affects people differently in their sensitivity. So some folks can't even stand the smell of it. I don't have that bad of a reaction to it. But the raw blood, once it's been field dressed and hanged, I can cut the meat, I can work it, I can fabricate it. I was a butcher in college, so we grew up doing our own meat, our own processing. I can still do that part of it. But getting out of the woods. The first season after I had alpha gal, I harvested a nice buck and just, you know, moving the horns, taking pictures, drifting grins, I'd get the blood on, then it would cause a lot of itching and a lot of irritation. And so my friends helped me out. But still, you know, it's. It's had to change the way I hunt. And luckily my good friends turned me on to birds and I went on my first duck hunt a couple years ago in Arkansas. Fell in love with it, came back, bought a dog, a shotgun, and a new habit. I've kind of changed. I grew up on the side of a mountain here in east Tennessee. So the duck hunt was totally new. And make a long story short, in my job, I get new people into hunting. And I grew up hunting as long as I was old enough to tow the firearm. So me having to transition to another discipline, if you call it, really opened my eyes what it needs to take to learn a new skill. So Even that, you know, someone that's very experienced, big game hunting for whitetail deer in Tennessee, transitioning to waterfowl. It was a whole new ball game. And my responsibility is getting other folks into it. So it actually, I think, gave me a good perspective of how to do so.

[Clay Newcomb]

Yeah.

[Brent Reeves]

Hey, Ronnie, I got a question, and I did a podcast on about ticks several episodes ago, and we talked about Alpha Gal and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and the ones that are predominantly in the US But I had some folks contact me and reach out about acupuncture treatment for Alpha Gal being a successful treatment. What's your experience with that? And have you discussed that with anybody there with your physician or anything?

[Tony Peterson]

Yeah, yeah. My wife was the first person brought that to my attention. I know people personally have done it, and they swear by it and they really believe it. And, you know, I'm not a doctor. I don't judge them, but it seems like to help it. I do know that they really think it helps them. I've looked into further research, and there's not a lot out there, but I do know that it goes in and out of remission or can. As far as an allergen goes, they're just through what I have seen. So I don't know if they're experiencing just, you know, a delayed response or if it's actually working. But my friends that have done it, they go and they get acupuncture, they get a series of needles in their ear, and they have to walk around for a couple days with those needles in their ear and come back and take it out. But I don't know how that affects.

[Clay Newcomb]

The sugar molecule not being able to eat red meat. Ronnie.

[Brent Reeves]

Right.

[Tony Peterson]

I don't know. I don't know if that's the answer, but I do know those folks truly believe it. And so I'm not going to say it don't work. It's just. I don't know how it works, and I haven't done that. So.

[Clay Newcomb]

Last question here from Tony. Ronnie.

[Unknown]

So, Ronnie, I've lived in tick territory my whole life. I'm. I'm just curious. After you got diagnosed with this, and it sort of changed the arc of your life and, you know, just your time in the outdoors, did you kind of not take ticks as seriously before? And are you pretty. Pretty vigilant about treatments, paying attention? Like, how has. How has your preventative, you know, kind of mindset, how has that changed ever since your diagnosis?

[Tony Peterson]

Oh, absolutely. So I always thought I took tick seriously. You know, we were Concerned about Rocky Mountain spot fever and Lyme disease and things like that. And I would use your. Your sprays and your deets. And really, where I hunted at particular, we worried about chiggers more than we did tick. We've got a bad batch of them down here, too, but I was pretty serious. But since I've caught this, I've been real serious because the allergist says a great way to get over this is to keep the ticks off of you, which is a tall chore if you recreate the outdoors. So, you know, I have a pretty intensive plan where I dip my clothes in that breathing, or peretherin, however you pronounce it. And then I spray deep. And even, you know, this is not, maybe not the best advice, but, you know, even putting around your ankles on bare skin, I don't know what they say about that, but it has helped me tremendously. And shut a lot of that down, where you put it on contact points around your ankles, around your waist. Use the products available out there. Because I visually want to get over this. So I'm trying to take the doctor's orders and try to keep those ticks off of me. But we also, you know, now that I bird hunt a lot, I take care of my dog, too, and make sure that he's got a lot of the tick protection, too, because another great way is for them bringing it into your house, bringing into your kennels and things. So my hunting companions, like my lab, my bird dog, always take care of that, too, to try to keep it out of the home. Just real cautious of it, because if you're in shade, you know, you're probably more likely to get it. And the bad thing about that spotted tick, the Lone Star tick, is from my knowledge that they sense your carbon monoxide and they actually hunt you. It's not like a deer tick kind of hangs out and grabs on to you when you walk by it. Those sticks actively crawl and hunt you. So do the best keeping those things off.

[Clay Newcomb]

Hey, man, we're rooting for you. And I think you're gonna kick it, man. Mark my words. Two and a half years, you're gonna be good to go.

[Tony Peterson]

I appreciate that, but I'm still keeping out there, recreating and just making a positive and getting more people in the out outdoors. And if you don't care, I'd like to tell a little bit about what we're doing with hunter advocacy before we go. Just real quickly that, you know, we focused on the positives with hunter advocacy. We talked about that tick protection. But we also tried to bring everybody into it for hunter advocacy. Part of my job here at UT is, you know, teaching these new hunters and kids how to get into outdoor recreation. So we talk about those dangers of the ticks and the bugs, but we also bring it back into the culture where they have a lot of fun and the importance of conservation.

[Brent Reeves]

Thank you for watching.

[Clay Newcomb]

Awesome work. Thank you, Ronnie.

[Unknown]

Thanks, buddy.

[Clay Newcomb]

Appreciate it, man. All right, man, that's. That's scary stuff. It really is for real. It could change your life. Those dang ticks. I had ehrlichiosis one time and the best way I describe it to people is it's what it feels like when you die. Yeah, I mean, like, that's the sickest I've ever been was with ehrlichiosis, which is also a tick borne illness that's more concentrated over in our part of the world. Yeah, our dogs get it. We get it.

[Unknown]

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[Clay Newcomb]

Now it's time for listener feedback. I see a lot of listener feedback up here. Phil, what do you have for us? What are some highlight comments, questions directed to the team? What do we got?

[Phil]

Yeah, get them in. Now. We'll do this again at the end of the show. But first we have a question from Adam, Clay and Bren. What can you tell us about this year's Squirrel Cook Off? And will you guys be there?

[Brent Reeves]

Ah, absolutely we'll be there and it will be bigger and it's like the World's Fair. It gets bigger and better every year.

[Clay Newcomb]

September 13th, Springdale, Arkansas. It's a free event. It's the world Championship Squirrel Cook Off. And yeah, Brent and I will be there.

[Brent Reeves]

We'll be there. We wouldn't miss it. It's like Christmas. It's like Redneck Christmas.

[Clay Newcomb]

Yeah, it's a, it's a really neat event because the highlight of the event is that there'll be 40 teams cooking gourmet squirrel and they feed it to the public.

[Brent Reeves]

So come hungry, leave full.

[Clay Newcomb]

Yep. It's really great. Yeah, I hope to see you there.

[Phil]

Right on.

[Clay Newcomb]

What else we got?

[Phil]

Phil, Freddie, Rick, he asked this question every single week, even if we don't. But since we don't have a meat eater menu segment today, I will ask the crew. Well, first, Freddie Rick says, I'm cooking a pronghorn neck right now to make barbacoa, what have you. The guy's been cooking lately with your name.

[Brent Reeves]

I've been cooking fried fish and a lot of it.

[Clay Newcomb]

Fried fish. I love Tony.

[Unknown]

I've been. So what I like to do is take my back straps out whole in the fall, and then in the summer, grill a whole back strap for the family. And since we had a bunch of redfish from Louisiana last year, I've been doing surf and turf. Even though I can't eat the fish, my wife and kids love it. And so we've been. We've been going pretty simple, but it's so good.

[Brent Reeves]

Can't beat it.

[Clay Newcomb]

I've been doing bear smash burgers. I've. I've developed quite a reputation around our house for making some mean black bear smash burgers. And so I've got the patty, like hanging out a half inch outside the bun and cook them on the grill. I don't cook them on like a griddle like on a fire grill, but press them down real thin. And so been hitting a lot of those this summer. And I'm on my annual watermelon. I try to for 60 days straight from July and August, full month often bleeds into September. Eat watermelon every single day.

[Brent Reeves]

That's good.

[Clay Newcomb]

But I've actually, I just realized in Montana, I haven't done that, but thanks, Freddy. Thanks, Freddie. What else we got, Phil?

[Phil]

Yeah, Tony, I think we might have gotten something like this the last time you were a part of the show. But, Alan, it says, Tony, best advice for getting your daughter into hunting. My daughter is 4 years old and this will be her first season getting into the woods with me. And I think this, this can extend to Brent and Clay as well, who are also fathers of daughters.

[Unknown]

You know, I would say four years old. One thing that we do with kids a lot that I think we get wrong is we take them the first time, like on a hunt where we're like, we're going to try to be the most successful as possible, even if your daughter's just observing, because at 4, she's probably not going to be shooting anything. But so for my Daughters. It was a big deal to go out and set a blind with me, something simple, you know, eat some candy, talk about the deer tracks, Just sort of get them involved so they have that connection to it when I'm going to take them back there on some nice September evening or something, when the conditions are going to be right and they're actually going to sit with me. And so it's just like, you know, it's kind of like training a puppy, right? Like, you have, like a short attention span to get this thing to stick, and you want them. You want to leave them wanting more. So you make it special, right? You stop at Dairy Queen, get blizzards on the way home, whatever. But it's always like this just tight window thing. You get in something cool, do something that's tied to the next thing, right? Or you walk them into the woods and you're like, we're going to go look for some berries or something. And oh, by the way, here's this little brook trout stream that we're going to come back to next week. And it's just this connection to nature instead of just this going in and being like, this is how I'm going to kill a deer and you're going to watch it. Which, you know, whatever might work for some kids, but for girls, I think, especially, like daughters, just that overall connection and like the recurring, like, we did this, now this, we did this, now this. And plus, that's just a good excuse to get out there more, you know.

[Brent Reeves]

Bailey's introduction was with my coon dog, Waylon. When we got waylon, he was nine or 10 months old. And this was 2020. So Bailey was like in the second grade. First. Second grade, I think. And we just. We take an evening, we were all learning together and we were just walking and talking. Only coon hunt when I coon hunted with. When Bailey went with me. Only time I ever remember talking about glitter, hair, bows, anything along that line. But we made it fun, and we just had fun out there. And the best part about it was just being with her. Just walking out there and showing her the things that I was interested.

[Phil]

Speaking of Bailey, I think she might have hijacked your wife's YouTube account. She says it's your favorite daughter with four hours. She says, Mr. Clay, look at my comments.

[Brent Reeves]

Yeah.

[Clay Newcomb]

Hey, Bailey.

[Brent Reeves]

They're on.

[Phil]

They're on their way to say say hi to me.

[Clay Newcomb]

Hello, Bailey and Alexis B. Reeves.

[Brent Reeves]

Yeah.

[Clay Newcomb]

You know, I think. I think getting kids in. Tony's advice was so good, but to me, another Point is, involve them in the, in the family culture, inside of it. Like, if it's just this isolated incident like that, you just. Their whole life is not connected to nature. Then all of a sudden one day it is. You know, I think the, the. And I had, I had, I'd say I had overall success with my kids and the goal which was not to make them hunters, but to make them appreciate hunting and wildlife conservation and wild places and just, I think with, with my son who really stuck with hunting. And it was that involvement in the culture. Like, he saw that his granddad did it and I did it, and we eat this meat and this is, this is part of just like what makes our family kind of who we are in a way, you know. So bring them in, bring them into the culture.

[Unknown]

I want to touch on one more thing about that. Even with 4 year olds, make them do just like a little bit of work so they have a buy in.

[Brent Reeves]

Yeah, like this.

[Unknown]

Like when you see a lot of parenting these days, we're doing an awful lot of stuff for our kids and like prioritizing their schedules and their lives. But even like when my daughters were little like that, if I made them carry a trail camera or some, like, do something. So I'm like, honey, you, you gotta lug this into the woods. And then when we need it, we'll set it up together. And they, there's just a different level of buy in for them. Like, they feel different about it because they did a little bit of work. So, like bear baiting with my daughters when they were young, which horrified my wife. But I'd be like, you're carrying a little bucket, a trail mix and gummies or whatever, and you're going to be a part of this too.

[Brent Reeves]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

You know, and I think there's just like a. I think there's a little bit different impact there.

[Clay Newcomb]

Yeah. Phil, do we have one more hot, hot question or should we go?

[Phil]

We have a ton of hot questions.

[Clay Newcomb]

Okay, we'll try to move a little faster.

[Phil]

Sure. Mitchell says question for Tony. Is it plausible to train my lab GSP mix to both hunt grouse and track deer? Realize the season can overlap, but is there a risk of confusing her?

[Unknown]

That's a great question. Dual purpose dogs used to be. Can my dog duck hunt and, or, you know, waterfall hunt? Can my dog upland hunt? And then somewhere along the line, guys like Tom Dock and a few other people started training for shed antlers. And so then people would be like, well, if I train my dogs for shed antlers, is it going to run off and forget about the roosters and look for antlers. It's like that's not how it works. When you, when you look at a long enough timeline with training a dog, we, we way underutilize them like a good sporting dog. A good working dog can handle a lot of tasks. So if you, if you take that dog and you train it to, to blood trail, which is, you know, tracking dog essentially, they're not really blood trailing. That dog's not going to get distracted when it's time to go point some grouse. It's just not. But it's also an amazing off season thing you can train for because a lot of bird hunting, you can train for parts of bird hunting, right? Especially, especially if you have a retriever, you know, you, where you can do a lot of long distance work and marks and all that stuff, but you can't, you can't do the hunt. You know, like you just mostly can't. But with shed antlers, with blood tracking or, or game trailing dogs, you can set that up all off season long and people kind of, we look at that and go well that's a, that's a really good skill I want my dog to have right with my buddies, you know, gut shoot an elk or whatever. I want to be able to bring my dog out there and find it. But it's also as a dog owner just going to help you level up that relationship because now you have another reason to work with them and read them and for them to read you. And now you have another way for them to solve problems with you and just level up. Like I, I encourage people to do whatever, whatever they can train their dog like in this kind of arena. Add on that skill set, Work on it.

[Brent Reeves]

Good, good stuff.

[Clay Newcomb]

Yeah, that's good. When Brent thinks about a dual purpose dog, he, he thinks about his dog. That tree coons and possums. That's a deep inside coon hunter joke. Worst thing possible that a dog could, a coon dog could do would be nobody's laughing.

[Phil]

Let us know in the chat if you appreciated that joke.

[Clay Newcomb]

No, Brett has a, I can joke with Brett because he's got a top notch walker dog.

[Brent Reeves]

Jealous.

[Clay Newcomb]

Hey, I see two questions.

[Phil]

Oh yeah, I was going to, we have another round of these at the end and I was going to hit you up with a bunch of these clip if you want to tackle any of these now let's, let's do it.

[Clay Newcomb]

Well, let's go, let's move on. I tell you what, let's move on. Let's come back to some of those. I saw a question about my book, which I would like to respond to. I saw a question about the Bear Grizz hall of Fame.

[Tony Peterson]

Yep.

[Clay Newcomb]

Which I would like to. I would like to address. But now it's time for Throwback Thursday. Cannot wait. Back on a Thursday morning. Stephen Brody, take me back to 1974. Throw back.

[Phil]

I can't believe it.

[Clay Newcomb]

This is top shell.

[Phil]

This is one of my favorites.

[Clay Newcomb]

All right, Throwback Thursday. We're gonna. We're gonna put up a photo that Brent Reeves has sent in, and Brent's gonna tell us about this picture.

[Brent Reeves]

That right there.

[Clay Newcomb]

Wow.

[Brent Reeves]

Is my great grandfather, Lovett Reeves. That is on our old home place in Cleveland County. That would be in the mid-50s right there when deer.

[Clay Newcomb]

Cool photo.

[Brent Reeves]

When deer were scarce.

[Clay Newcomb]

And that could be the COVID of a book.

[Brent Reeves]

Few and far between. And if you look in the background.

[Clay Newcomb]

Back there, there's that possum tree and.

[Brent Reeves]

There'S a coon dog laying back there. Now, my grandfather was a. If you see the overalls and the pocket watch there. And I would give anything if I could have one thing out of that photograph, it wouldn't be the antlers, and the watch would be number two. But my first item that I would love to have is that hat that.

[Unknown]

He'S wearing right there.

[Brent Reeves]

But he was a farmer and a woodsman, and he is the guy that introduced case knives into our family. That's the guy that started it all. And that. That would be Bailey's great, great grandfather. And there's six generations.

[Clay Newcomb]

Did you know him?

[Brent Reeves]

No, he died in 1964, I think, but. Or maybe 63, but just a few years.

[Clay Newcomb]

So that's your dad's. Dad.

[Brent Reeves]

That's my dad's grandfather.

[Clay Newcomb]

So it's your great grandfather. I got it.

[Brent Reeves]

Yep.

[Clay Newcomb]

Man, that. That for real when I saw that picture. It looks like one of those photos that, you know, you. You. You got off the Internet because it's so cool, you know, but it's like, that's really grandpa. I love that photo.

[Brent Reeves]

Yeah, it's. It's a great photo. It's a absolute treasure in our family.

[Clay Newcomb]

So those. Those deer horns aren't around?

[Brent Reeves]

Nope. No idea. Or I'm sure they went with the rest of that deer that didn't get eaten right then. It wasn't a. It wasn't a thing. Keeping antlers back then, probably the biggest trophy of the deal was absolutely encountering.

[Clay Newcomb]

A deer and probably using those walkers to run them. Weren't they?

[Brent Reeves]

That or I figure that they were probably squirrel hunting and the deer came through because he wasn't leaving the house to go deer hunting back then because he's got a squirrel vest on.

[Clay Newcomb]

Yeah.

[Brent Reeves]

And that's how I assume that deer got. Got brought to the table. I don't know.

[Clay Newcomb]

That's cool. That's a cool photo. Yeah. Back when, when, I mean, the. The traditional way to hunt deer in a lot of places in the country, but specifically the south, was using dogs to run them.

[Brent Reeves]

Yep.

[Clay Newcomb]

Because there were so few, so few deer, you just had to get them.

[Brent Reeves]

Up and moving, you know, get them going around.

[Clay Newcomb]

And so a deer and a dog just went together today. It's not. Not as popular. Good job, Brent. Good photo.

[Brent Reeves]

Thank you.

[Clay Newcomb]

Good photo. Let's throw Tony's photo up there for throwback Thursday. Let us know what you think in the comments. Look at that.

[Brent Reeves]

That's two keepers in one photo.

[Unknown]

So this fish you met, you guys, do you guys have smallies in our.

[Clay Newcomb]

Huh. This big, right?

[Unknown]

So, Clay, you guys know this, right? Somebody shoots a bear, Everybody says they're 300 pounds, you're like, they're 175 pounds. You know, somebody shoots a giant, you're like, maybe, Right. But you see a picture of it, you kind of know.

[Clay Newcomb]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

In the. In the bass world, where I live, like, to. To truly break the six pound mark is like, you're just not going to do it very often, even if you fish a lot. Smallies or largemouth. Right. So that's my little girl when she was. I think she was 6, and we went out to this rock pile at sunrise, and we like to throw top waters.

[Clay Newcomb]

Right.

[Unknown]

And so I had her. She wasn't throwing a bait caster yet, but I had her with a seven foot, you know, medium heavy rod, braided line. So you could. We use a lot of whopper ploppers, you know, streamline. Pretty heavy top water that you can throw a mile.

[Clay Newcomb]

Okay.

[Unknown]

And so we pull up to this rock pile and, you know, she casts out there, cast it far. And that. That whopper plopper hits the water and she reels like half a turn. And this fish hits. You know, I just. I heard a blow up and she set the hook. You know, she's tiny. And that fish came straight up like they always do smallmouth. And I saw it come up and I. In my head, I just go, she will never get this fish.

Like, I didn't.

I didn't go for the net. You know, I'm cheering her on, but I'm like, there's no way this fish isn't going to throw this in the amount of time it's going to take her to get it back in. And she leaned into that fish and fought it and fought it and fought it and finally got it up by the boat, got it to where she could kind of work it around. I had a net with me, I netted that fish. And you know, I don't mount fish, right? Like I'm.

[Clay Newcomb]

That's.

[Unknown]

That stage is kind of gone for a lot of people. And it's the first time I'll never forget. I had the impulse, I looked into that net and I was like, I'm throwing this sucker in the freezer and we're gonna mount it. But so before I get judged on this, got it into the boat, measured it, it was just broke.22 inches, which is a crazy mark, right? Like when you actually start measuring big smallies, 20s and 21s, they're big fish, right? But that 22 inch mark up, up where we live is just no joke, right?

[Clay Newcomb]

It's almost two foot long, right?

[Unknown]

And so we got really nice pictures of it. And I'm like, we gotta let this fish go, you know? And she didn't, you know, she wasn't like, we got to keep it and stuff it, whatever. Like that's not her thing. But it was like one of those things when she let it go. I'm like, you, you have no idea.

[Clay Newcomb]

How many have you caught that big?

[Unknown]

I have caught two for sure in my life. That broke. I caught one that was 22, and I caught one that was 23. With 10 billion hours of effort.

[Brent Reeves]

Yeah, right.

[Unknown]

I wasn't in first grade, right? And so that was just one of those things where I was like, this is just such a beautiful fish. And you know, when you look at the studies of how, how old a fish that that could be, where we live a couple hours south of there, they did a pretty good study on smallmouth a long time ago. And to get to 14 inches, which on the river where that fish or where they were studying those fish was a keeper, the slot, whatever. It was seven, I think it was seven years old.

[Clay Newcomb]

Seven years.

[Unknown]

And so you think about a fish that's a couple hours north, short growing season, hitting 22 inches, you know, I mean, you're like, that fish might have been out there for 15 years. I don't, I don't know.

[Clay Newcomb]

Right.

[Unknown]

But a long time. And I just think that's cool as hell.

[Clay Newcomb]

Yeah, that that is really cool. Now, can't. Could you have gotten a replica made of that fish?

[Unknown]

We could have. You know, I mean, it's like you're.

[Clay Newcomb]

Just not into that, right?

[Unknown]

When you get. When you get really. We catch a lot of big fish, and we had really nice pictures of it. It was just this cool moment.

[Clay Newcomb]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

And so. Yeah, maybe I should have measured the girth and done the whole thing. I did. I just didn't.

[Clay Newcomb]

Yeah. You know, in the south, we have. Or at least in where I'm from, we have. We have smallmouth in creeks and rivers. Not as much in the lakes. Like people. Largemouth bass fish in the lakes, but you would go to the creeks and rivers in the mountains to catch smallmouth, and they, you know, a big one. I don't really know length. Bear would know length pretty good. But, you know, like, a two or three pounder would be a nice creek fish.

[Unknown]

Yeah. You know, I mean, that's. I'm sure down where you live, that's connected to water temperature and rocks.

[Brent Reeves]

Oh, yeah.

[Unknown]

If you don't have rocks, you know, like boulders, you just don't have a lot of smallies.

[Clay Newcomb]

Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Great photo. Great photo. All right, let's go to my. This is the final photo in our Thursday throwback Thursday. All right, which is which? Here in the. In the front of the four wheeler, there is my youngest son, Shepard Newcomb, crying, wearing his cowboy boots. That's Bear John Newcomb in the middle there, who, I think a lot of people know Bear. And if you'll notice, that is a live coyote tied to the back of the. Of the four wheeler. And that day, it was in late summer, and we had gone to this place that we were going to deer hunt for some private land. And it took the boys, and we'd hung a stand, and it was a. It was a funny moment because I. I literally remember, like, wanting to make the trip fun for the boys, and I told them, I said, y' all stay here at this four wheeler. I'll be back. And I really didn't know what I was looking for, but I. I knew I was gonna find something and bring it back to him. I'm not kidding.

[Unknown]

I.

[Clay Newcomb]

And I took off, and they're little guys and they're throwing rocks and wrestling there around the four wheeler on a little road. And I go off in the woods, and I don't walk 50 yards, and I see a litter of coyote pups get up in front of me and flush like a covey of quail. And they take off running. And I take off running after them. And basically it was like a cheetah chasing a herd of gazelle. You know, one would split off to the right and I'd stick with the two. And then one split off to the left, and I just picked the one. And I could run as fast as that coyote pup, but I couldn't catch it. And. And it. And it took a turn and started going down this real rocky drainage. And I remember it just like it was yesterday. I'm running so fast, as fast as I can run downhill running on this boulder patch. And I start to feel my chest and head lean out in front of my face, and I. And I know I'm toast.

[Brent Reeves]

Yeah.

[Clay Newcomb]

And I just say, I just, Just go straight down, Just fly through the air, land on the rocks, Figure I'm all busted up. And also, Tony figured that the coyote has gotten away because he was like 8ft in front of me, Both of us running full speed. I bite the dust, and when I stand up, I see him. I saw him duck into a little hole like he. He gave up the chase immediately when I bit the dust. And so I jump up, and he's under this rock. And I flip over the rock thinking, mama coyote might be in there. I didn't know, right? And there's that pup curled up on the ground. I reach and just grab him by the nape of the neck, grab him up like this. And he just goes limp. And I walk back to Baron Shepherd. And boys, I'm telling you, I was the hero dad of the year when walked back up and I had that cow puff by the nape of the neck and said, boys, look what I caught. And I had a little rope and tied him to the, to the, to the, to the back of the vehicle there and took him home. And we kept him for about a week. And I also, at that time, it was legal in Arkansas to have deer. And we, we were raising the deer at that time, too. And I kept the deer in the coyote in the same little kennel. And then the coyote. Is everybody interested? I hope the story's not going too long. The coyote start. I thought, well, I'm going to raise this coyote. We're going to have a pet coyote. And it started getting mean and biting me. And so I knew I had to get rid of it. But this is truth. I was worried about the legal ramifications of killing a coyote out of season. I mean, it was on a deer hunting property. Like we're trying to get rid of coyotes. So you'd have thought I might have just exterminated the coyote, but I actually took it out into another place and turned it loose.

[Unknown]

Why did you take it back where you caught it?

[Clay Newcomb]

Because it's where I deer hunt. Tony. He put it on my story of the coyote. Why we called him Wy.

[Brent Reeves]

Very original.

[Clay Newcomb]

Very original. All right. All right. What a success. Throwback Thursday. Great photos, guys.

[Unknown]

Hunting demands preparation, persistence and gear that will not quit on you. That is why I wear First Light. This isn't about hype. It's about no compromise. Gear built to perform, built to last. Whether it's their industry leading merino wool keeping me comfortable through the cold and the hot, or their durable outerwear shrugging off the elements, First Light is built to help you go farther and stay longer. Designed by hunters for hunters with a deep commitment to conservation and land access. No shortcuts, no excuses, just gear you can count on. Head to first light dot com. That's F I R S T L I T E dot com.

[Clay Newcomb]

We're now going to go on to interview number two. We're going to be interviewing a guy that Brent knows. His name is Each Stewart from Arkansas. Brent, I'm going to let you take.

[Brent Reeves]

It over my buddy each. He is the director of the Public Timber Project there in Arkansas. He's a dedicated lifelong duck hunter, water fowler, good friend of mine, and I want to get him on here and talk about the stuff that, that he's doing. Each, can you hear us, buddy?

[Unknown]

I got you. Can you all hear me?

[Brent Reeves]

I got you, man. Each, tell us about.

[Unknown]

Thanks for having me.

[Brent Reeves]

You're very welcome. We're pleased that you're here. Tell us about the project you got going, what the name of it is, what your role in it is and what the plan is for Arkansas.

[Unknown]

All right, well, thanks for. Thanks again. My name is Eth Stewart. I guess on paper I'm the president of the Public Timber Project. In reality, I'm just one of the fellows that started it. But one of us had to fall on the grenade and call ourselves the president. We formed ourselves as a formal here in Arkansas. So we had to get organized on paper, at least the very beginning. But in reality, the Public Timber Project is a grassroots movement for public land duck hunters all across the country. Of course, our focus was on issues that we were seeing in Arkansas on our public lands. So we're more of a social experiment and a movement than we are formal, nonprofit. And at the end of this, I'll ask folks to. If you want to support us, support us by following us, reaching out. We don't really need your money right now. The only expenses we have is on ball caps and trash bags. But I'll step back a little bit and talk a little bit about why we started in the first place. And for folks that don't duck, that aren't from the south and aren't aware, you know, in the duck hunting world, hunting ducks and flood timbers is sort of the holy grail of duck hunting. If you haven't seen ducks finish through the canopy of the trees and land at your feet in the woods, man, you ain't lived. And there's only so many places we can do that. Arkansas happens to be one of the states that has more public land available for folks to carry on this tradition than any other state in the U.S. but most of the states in the south have public lands, state and federal, where folks can go and hunt this way. And it's an old way of hunting. It's an old tradition. This is duck hunting, flooded timber in the South. It's part of our culture. It's part of our identity. It's who we are. A lot of us, myself included, I'd rather be skunked in the woods than shoot a limit on a rice field. Because it's something about being in the woods. It's the way we hunt. It's our history, our tradition. Like I said, this is culture for us down here. And things are changing, and not all for the better. On our public lands in Arkansas, we've got a lot of management issues necessarily get into, but we've got a lot of challenges. I'll leave it at that. And one of the things that's come about in the last few years, the way the state and the feds are modifying and changing how they're managing these places, is that fewer and fewer places are holding water. So all these flooded timber areas in the south that we duck hunt, these are forests. It's forest management. These are forests that flood seasonally as the Mississippi comes up in the winter, and all the rivers in Arkansas and all the southern states flood up with water. These forests get water on them, and the water comes up and it lets the ducks come in there, gives them safety, shelter, food. They feed on acorns and all the other food in these areas. And so if you have less and less water on our public lands in the places that we do have water, what we're seeing is a huge concentration of hunters in these few areas. And probably nowhere is this more apparent. The Black river here in Arkansas, and I Hate to mention the Black river so much because folks, locals up there that live and hunt up there, they don't really want everyone knowing about the Black River. But the word is out on the.

[Brent Reeves]

Black river, there's no secret.

[Unknown]

There ain't no secret, man. It's all over the Internet and YouTube. So just to kind of paint a little bit of a picture on why the public timber project exists, last season on duck opener at Ashbaugh boat ramp, which is one of the three probably busiest boat ramps on the Black river, we had a thousand trucks and boat trailers lined up at the boat ramp. That line, it stretched out a mile and a half from the boat ramp. And fellas were in line for up to a week before opening morning. That's a thousand trucks and trailers at one boat ramp. There's no trash services, there's no porta potties. And the impact this is having on this area, it's an unintended consequence of our current management, if that makes sense. We're really impacting these areas in a way that's we're causing damage to some of these areas. So we're seeing changes like that happening in duck hunting in Arkansas and the South. We're seeing a lot of areas that we used to hunt that aren't holding water and aren't holding ducks. And we're seeing this huge concentration of hunters on fewer and fewer public land areas that have water and have birds. Okay. We're seeing some other big changes on public lands down here with duck hunting that it's sort of all this stuff fits in together. Probably one of the biggest ones concerned about is the changing demographic of the public land duck hunter in the south, in particular in Arkansas. Now, when we all grew up, if you duck hunted in Arkansas at all and you hunted public, if you weren't, if you weren't a rich man, if you were a poor kid like I was, and you hunted the boat ramp because you couldn't afford membership at a private club, you were going to run into a whole litany of fellows at the boat ramp. And there was going to be plenty of old timers there that had been doing it their whole lives, that had a thing or two to teach the rest of us. Well, because of this increase of pressure that we're seeing, we've run off all our old timers. You just don't see them no more out of the boat ramp. So what we have is basically a angry mob of 23 year olds that are being mentored by YouTube. And if you want to preach it well, if you.

[Clay Newcomb]

If you.

[Unknown]

If you were to talk to my dad, who still duck hunts with me, 78 years old, he'd tell you that there ain't a show on YouTube that ain't treetopping birds.

[Brent Reeves]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

So the point being that these young fellows are getting into duck hunting. They're not being taken out by their dads and their uncles and their granddads. They're learning everything they can from YouTube. And our opinion that we're making the wrong folks famous in duck hunting, and we've got some just bad examples out there, and we're seeing our culture shift. We're seeing traditions and the ways we used to hunt. Things that got passed down from generation to generation is we're seeing it erode and change and all but disappear from the landscape when we go duck hunt. And so as a response to that, like every other duck camp in Arkansas and the south, you know, we sit around and we complain about all the problems of duck hunting. I guess at our camp, we decided we wanted. And you said, preach. I hate preaching. But really, everybody in duck hunting is preaching about duck hunting. So we thought from the beginning, hey, if we're going to change things for the better, it needs to be through action and not just so. Last fall, we started doing cleanups here in Arkansas. And we started off down on the White River, Clarendon, at a boat ramp. That's probably one of the most trash places that you could launch a boat to go hunt ducks or anything out of the woods, but a real busy boat ramp. We did a cleanup. Not really. We didn't really have to show up, and. But we thought, this is a good place to start. We just need to start showing up organized duck hunters and get folks to come out of the woodwork, show up to our cleanups, get involved in a positive way, making a difference in our woods. And the next cleanup we did, we had a couple people show up, and the next one, we had a couple more folks show up, and it slowly started building. And we realized early on that these cleanup projects, these boat ramps were working. The other thing that happened is we had a lot of duck hunters reaching out to us across the south and all Minnesota, Canada, all over the place that started finding out about us on social media, and they wanted to get involved, but they couldn't make it to any of our organized cleanups. And so we started our hat campaign, which is basically, duck hunters, clean up your local area. There's public lands that you love, that that's where you hunt, take ownership, clean them up. Clean them up, be a good role model. Send us the picture. And we want to fill social media with positive images coming from the duck hunting community as opposed to the fist fights and duck holes and the horse races to get to your spot. There's far too much negative press. We're our own worst enemies out there. We're painting a picture to the AGFC and to all the land management agencies.

[Clay Newcomb]

Can I, can I. Can I interrupt you just for a second, man? This, this is incredible. I'm enthralled for just for sake of time, man. How can we help you? Where, where can people get involved?

[Unknown]

Thanks for reeling me in because I could talk for an hour.

[Brent Reeves]

I think you did.

[Unknown]

First thing is find us out on social media on Instagram at the Public Timber Project.

[Clay Newcomb]

Okay? The Public Timber Project.

[Unknown]

Okay, The Public Timber Project. You can find us on Facebook and YouTube and tick tock under the same name.

[Brent Reeves]

Okay?

[Unknown]

We've got some short films coming out. We've got a full length film coming out later this duck season. We post our organized clips on there and all of our contact information on there. If anybody's involved, message me on Instagram and me or Blakely, somebody else will reach back to you.

[Clay Newcomb]

Okay, man, awesome.

[Unknown]

Take it from there.

[Clay Newcomb]

Hey, thank you. Each really appreciate you coming on today. Really appreciate it.

[Unknown]

Love it.

[Clay Newcomb]

Excellent. All right, man. Take care. Take care. Wow. I had no idea there'd be a thousand thousand boats lined up.

[Brent Reeves]

And that's just one access, you know.

[Clay Newcomb]

That's incredible.

[Brent Reeves]

That's one access. I remember 25 years ago, my brother and I would go to a public access on a Tuesday hunting public ground and be the only folks in the parking lot. Times have changed.

[Clay Newcomb]

The good old days.

[Brent Reeves]

Yep.

[Clay Newcomb]

Wow. Wow. All right. Each Stuart. All right. We're moving right along to our multi trail camera contest. And it's on this. Our friends at Moultrie are sponsoring a contest. We're going to be giving away a camera and we're gonna look at some. Some photos. What do you think? Do you think we should look up the photos first just to get some. Some, some good vibes going and then talk about the. The Edge 3. What do you want to do, Tony?

[Unknown]

Sure.

[Clay Newcomb]

Everybody, we kind of need to move it along here a little bit.

[Brent Reeves]

That's a good trail.

[Clay Newcomb]

Let's. Let's put up the. The trail camera images. The winner will receive two Edge 2 First Light Spectre Camo Edition multi cameras with a 10 watt solar pack bundle with it and a 250 gift card. From the meat to the meat eater store a 250 gift card to first light. This is a huge price. And a case in a case Knife. Brent Reeves signature mini trapper. Hey, that may be the biggest thing there. Yeah, this is a huge prize. That's going now, Phil. Let's go into one of these.

[Phil]

Let's go into one of these. And here's how it's going to work. We have four entries. You guys are more than welcome to, you know, add as much commentary and your opinions as you'd like. But the winner will be selected by the live chat. I will put up a poll.

[Clay Newcomb]

Okay.

[Phil]

After you look at all, after you look at all the pictures, the live chat will vote for a couple minutes. And whoever has the most votes will win. That crazy.

[Clay Newcomb]

Okay, so we're gonna need everybody's help. Phil, show us the first picture. First trail camera photo in our contest.

[Phil]

Bam.

[Clay Newcomb]

We've got a big woods, timber velvet buck. And the, the, the, the, the. What we were trying to do here was get people to show us velvet bucks. I don't know if I mentioned that every trail camera. Every trail camera contest has a theme. This month's theme for the Moultrie trail cram contest is velvet buck. So that is a beautiful image right there of a big old buck.

[Brent Reeves]

Right. I see white oak, acorn trees. I see some hickory trees.

[Clay Newcomb]

I like that kicker.

[Unknown]

I was wondering if we were working with a river bottom situation here.

[Clay Newcomb]

That looks like a southern river bottom buck to me.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Clay Newcomb]

All right, so we got the. We're going to call that the big buck from Andrew.

[Phil]

And this is from Andrew Molino. Number one.

[Clay Newcomb]

Okay, that's number one. Let's go to number two.

[Brent Reeves]

Favorite person.

[Clay Newcomb]

Oh, airborne.

[Brent Reeves]

Is that a muley?

[Clay Newcomb]

That's a mule deer jumping a rattlesnake. A little, a little draw there.

[Unknown]

Got a little buddy behind him.

[Clay Newcomb]

Yeah, I see a little buck back there.

[Brent Reeves]

Oh, yeah, I see it back there.

[Clay Newcomb]

Yeah. That's a, that's a classic. That's an action, action photo. Yeah, I like that. I like that.

[Phil]

All right, number that's from I like hunting.

[Clay Newcomb]

Okay.

[Phil]

Number three is from C. Knudson or C.K. nudson.

[Clay Newcomb]

Wow. Albino buck. That's impressive.

[Brent Reeves]

Right? Even the velvet's white. Check that out.

[Clay Newcomb]

That's impressive. I'd like to know the history of that. That story looks like last. Looks like a 20, 24 photo. It appears to be a northern photo by the spruce.

[Unknown]

Or, or I was going to guess Wisconsin.

[Clay Newcomb]

They have a lot of white deer up there. Yeah, yeah, that's. That's impressive. I mean, you. I'll probably never get a trail camera picture of a white deer.

[Brent Reeves]

So that one's in Missouri, not far from where we Turkey end up.

[Clay Newcomb]

Oh, is that right? Interesting. Okay, last photo in the trail camera contest this month. We've got a shed velvet buck. That's it. Those are always really cool because that happens really quick. There's just this very short window of time. Like hours.

[Unknown]

Yep.

[Clay Newcomb]

When a buck shedding his velvet.

[Unknown]

I watched a bachelor group when I was hunting in North Dakota one time going and bed in a little drainage. And the buck that I wanted to shoot in the group was velvet when he went to bed. And when I watched him get out and come start walking toward my stand, he had shed it completely.

[Clay Newcomb]

Really? Did you kill it?

[Unknown]

I didn't kill him, but I killed his buddy.

[Clay Newcomb]

Okay.

[Unknown]

He ran right on through. He had a destination to go to. I couldn't stop him. But I took a consolation prize. I was pretty happy. And he was in full velvet.

[Clay Newcomb]

Okay, so we're gonna need everybody to.

[Phil]

Recap here and then we'll start the poll here.

[Clay Newcomb]

Okay. Number one, the, the first one is the big buck. I feel like for pure aesthetics of lighting, imagery, beauty, it's gonna be hard to beat. Go to the next one.

[Brent Reeves]

Also a recent photo.

[Clay Newcomb]

Was it recent? Yeah. Here we got the action photo. This is our action photo. Okay, so there's something cool about.

[Phil]

That's the flying one.

[Clay Newcomb]

Okay. Yep. And then we got once a once in a lifetime kind of. Kind of photo. You know, pretty impressive. Big buck too, usually, you know, if it's some little scrapper, I'd be like, that's cool. That's a big old buck too.

[Unknown]

Right?

[Clay Newcomb]

That's impressive. And then we got the, we got the nighttime shedding velvet buck.

[Phil]

All right, starting the poll right now.

[Clay Newcomb]

Should we discuss what we think, Phil?

[Phil]

Yeah. Yes, keep talking.

[Clay Newcomb]

Well, go ahead. What do you all think? Which one you least impressed with? Which one you voting for? Let's make it quick.

[Brent Reeves]

They're all impressive. I have at least experienced with muleys, so that didn't really. I mean, I like the photo because of the action.

[Clay Newcomb]

Yeah.

[Brent Reeves]

But the big one didn't grab you. The big one at the end, standing in that white oak bottom. That, that, that grab me right there.

[Clay Newcomb]

Yeah, that.

[Brent Reeves]

And it's a like a three day old photograph. Whatever.

[Clay Newcomb]

That's cool. That's cool.

[Unknown]

That's. That's right where I'm at too, when I look at that picture. I mean, obviously it's a beautiful deer. Beautiful deer. But where it's at, I mean, that's the kind of stuff I just love to hunt. I look at that picture and that picture brings me into a place where I would see a deer like that.

[Clay Newcomb]

Yeah, I'm gonna have to go with the team here. I would be voting for Andrew's big buck number one. But I think you could make a case for the albino.

[Tony Peterson]

It is.

[Phil]

The poll is very tight right now. So if you haven't voted yet, get in there and let your voice be heard.

[Clay Newcomb]

Andrew, if you're out there, what are the chances that Brent. Brent can come hunt that buck with you.

[Brent Reeves]

I'll film you with my shotgun.

[Clay Newcomb]

No, you can film Brent. All right, four photos. Big buck, muley.

[Phil]

I'm gonna give you guys, I'm gonna get 10 more seconds on the clock here. And those 10 seconds can make a difference. That's how close this is close, guys.

[Unknown]

I mean that.

[Clay Newcomb]

And the winner of this gets a huge prize package. Two Moultrie cameras, Meteor gift card, 250 meter gift card, 250 first light gift card, and a Brit Reeves case knife signature mini trapper. Huge prize package, huge drum roll.

[Phil]

Phil, I think I actually. I might have a drum roll here. I don't have a drum roll, but I do have a winner sound. Whoever wins.

[Clay Newcomb]

I'm sorry, I think the big buck's going to win. I think the fact that all three of us would have picked that one.

[Phil]

I have ended the poll.

[Clay Newcomb]

Poll is ended.

[Phil]

So in last place with only 3% of the vote was the number four from Eric Kessler. The shedding oozing.

[Clay Newcomb]

Yikes. Anyway, yeah, thanks for the submission, Eric.

[Brent Reeves]

Cool picture.

[Phil]

And then in third place with 27% of the vote was your guys favorite, angie molino's big 27.

[Clay Newcomb]

Wow.

[Phil]

And so in second place with 32% of the vote, we had the flying buck from I like hunting. Which means the albino buck from Chad Knutson. You're the winner.

[Clay Newcomb]

Congratulations, Chad. Congratulations. I'd like to know if that's a deer that you had access to. What happened to it? Did somebody get that deer? Did he. Is he still out there? That's pretty cool, man. Congratulations. And man, you got a lot of decisions to make about what to do with those gift cards and you know where Brent's gonna hunt up there with. So congratulations.

[Phil]

I can't find the right ones.

[Clay Newcomb]

Tony, tell us about the Moultrie Edge 3.

[Unknown]

All right, so I got a Moultrie Edge 3 right here in this fancy box. We learned all about these dudes Yesterday. So I mean this is, this isn't my world. But some, some of the listeners here, Southern guys running feeders, they have multi connect. You can basically manage and monitor your feeders. And it's a whole system. It's a totally way more efficient way to live in that world. Which isn't my world. What is my world is trying to find big bucks on a natural pattern. And you know, I know AI is sort of a buzzword out there right now. Anybody who plays in the stock market or messes around Wall street bets, you're seeing Nvidia and you're seeing Palantir and these companies that are, they're doing a lot with AI or you hear hear about a lot. Well, Moultrie has Moultrie AI coming out on this Edge three. And one of the things this can do is help you filter through to only get videos of bucks sent to your, sent right to your apps that right to your phone instead of getting notifications for all the other critters does whatever. If you're, if you want to select it down pretty far, you can. Yeah, you can kind of customize it too. If you want to get just photos of non target animals or photos of all animals, but also get videos sent to you of bucks, you can do that too. And I keep thinking about this. I'm heading back down to Nebraska where I'm hunting with Steve this fall. I have a whole bunch of cameras down on this ranch that we're hunting. It's brand new property to us, working cattle ranch. And so I put up cameras and in some spots I'm getting cattle, I'm getting beavers, I'm getting geese, I'm getting lots of non raccoons, non target animals. And so when I go back down there, I'm going to swap out some of those cameras with these Edge 3s, because I'm filtering through tons.

[Clay Newcomb]

You don't want to get notifications about cows, right? That when it sends out a picture to you, it's using battery life. So the multi AI when you program it and some of these guys that are putting cameras over feeders are potentially getting hundreds of pictures a day.

[Unknown]

Yeah, right. Well, right. And when you put up a camera in a pasture that doesn't have cows in and they put in cows, you get hundreds of pictures a day too. So it's. And this is, you know, I like pictures of deer, I like pictures of all animals. But this is like our rut hunt. So I'm kind of just trying to key in on the bucks, the Other thing I'll say about this quick, this isn't new to the Edge 3, but it is a feature of it. A lot of cameras for. For a while had like a live AIM feature. They had a. They had some kind of, you know, viewing window, LCD screen, whatever. So you could set it up and point in the right direction. Because I do a lot of, like, public land hunting. I'll put them up high in this situation because we knew cows were going to get rotated through there, and I didn't want them to mess with the cameras. You're mounting them higher and pointing them down. And so there's a live AIM feature on here that you can go to your phone and see exactly what you're seeing. So I can customize that and set it up exactly the way I want to. So I know when I walk away, I'm not waiting for that test picture or anything like that. I'm like, okay, I know this is going to be aimed exactly how I want it to be.

[Clay Newcomb]

Yeah, man. The Moltres, I tell you, one of the things I was most impressed about was the price point on those things. I don't know exactly what that's going to be, but I mean, this is not. This is like under $140 camera.

[Brent Reeves]

It's like $49.

[Clay Newcomb]

Yeah, yeah. $150 camera. Yeah. So, I mean, it's pretty inexpensive. And they. And they. The. The. Some of the other cameras are less or cheaper than that.

[Unknown]

Right. And. And the last thing I'll say about this too, is, you know, it wasn't that long ago in cellular cameras where we had to select a Verizon, select a carrier. Right? Verizon, AT&T, whatever. Now you can connect all major carriers with this. So whatever. Whatever company has the best reception wherever you're going to get. So in the whitetail world, maybe not that big of a deal in a lot of places, but if you're trying to monitor a water hole or a wallow for elk or, you know, some of the western applications and just some places, you know how it is. Like some places you go where, for whatever reason, your buddy's got Verizon, he's got awesome coverage, and you have AT&T, and it sucks. It's kind of nice to not have to worry about that anymore. It'll pick the best one and use it.

[Clay Newcomb]

Yep, yep. Excellent, excellent, excellent. We're moving on to the end of our show here, guys. We appreciate everybody being here, commenting. We're going to take a last round here of listener feedback. Phil yeah, we knock out a few.

[Phil]

Let's go ahead and talk about your book, Clay. Where's. Where's the question? And it was somewhere, if you just want to start talking about.

[Clay Newcomb]

Yeah, I had somebody ask about the book.

[Phil]

Here we go. It's from Ogor. Hey, Clay, how's your book coming along? I'm really looking forward to it.

[Brent Reeves]

Hey, man, that guy right there is the most. He may be the most loyal listener ever. I see him every.

[Phil]

He lives in Hungary, Clay. I don't know how often you watch the show, but he's here every single week. He's got great questions. He's got a bear grease hat on. He's a big fan.

[Clay Newcomb]

Oh, man, the book is going incredible. It's. It's changing my life. It really is just the. The. The discipline involved in the level of research. We do a lot of research on bear grease, but I've never had to research stuff like. Like we are for this book. And we're still a long, long ways from. From Clay's book coming out, Tony. But I'd say I've got a. We've got a third of the book in a format right now that I would feel comfortable, you know, sending to someone.

[Brent Reeves]

Can you share the target date with it? Is that still.

[Clay Newcomb]

It's. It's not really.

[Brent Reeves]

Gotcha.

[Clay Newcomb]

Yeah, but the book is about the American Black Bear.

[Unknown]

It's the.

[Clay Newcomb]

It's the. It is the. The bio of the American Black Bear told like it's never been told before, guaranteed. Book has never been written like this before. It's gonna blow your mind.

[Phil]

From Freddie Rick, another food centric question. He says he doesn't have much access to squirrels here in Nevada. Do you guys. Do you think I could replace them with jackrabbit for recipes that call for squirrels?

[Brent Reeves]

Yeah. I ain't never had a jackrabbit, but if they. If they taste anything, I mean, here. What you gonna do with a squirrel is what I'm gonna do with a cottontail. And that's frame. Powder his behind with buttermilk and flour and throw him in some hot grease.

[Clay Newcomb]

I don't have a lot of experience with jackrabbits. I hear bad things about them, though.

[Phil]

Yeah. Steve was talking crap about him the.

[Clay Newcomb]

Other day, I think.

[Unknown]

I think frying them would be the best bet.

[Brent Reeves]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

And I don't know if you're gonna pull it off or not.

[Brent Reeves]

Yeah. I don't know how you never hit.

[Clay Newcomb]

One, but good idea.

[Phil]

Let's go ahead and talk about that hall of fame question. Tigers tigers fan 6884 if you're not.

[Clay Newcomb]

Familiar with the Bear Grease podcast, we have an official Bear Grease hall of Fame which typically goes to. There are, I believe there are nine or 10 members that people that have been inducted into the hall of Fame. There's currently three living people in the Bear Grease hall of Fame. Some of the more famous candidates would be Daniel Boone, Tecumseh Osceola, Davy Crockett. Some of the less well known people would be the the living plot Bear hunter in East Tennessee, Roy Clark, Warner Glenn's in the hall of Fame, Lawrence James Lawrence, my, my, my, my buddy, mentor, backwoodsman from Arkansas. So a lot of variety in the Bear's hall of Fame. There's one woman in the Berries hall of Fame, Granny Henderson, Eva Henderson, Bart Martyr of the Buffalo river and man, you can't make this happen, tiger. It's got to happen on its own, brother. I mean we may go for a decade without a Hall of Famer. This is not staged. So we're just waiting for, we're just waiting for the next legend to pop up. So good question though. Appreciate you paying attention, brother.

[Brent Reeves]

You talking like Hulk Hogan.

[Clay Newcomb]

Brother. I really appreciate what you're doing out there.

[Phil]

Let's do one more for Tony. Jacob says how old is too old to train a dog to blood trail? I'm colorblind and having a dog has helped me find two deer. My lab is eight years old and I'd love to have her help me.

[Unknown]

Well, old dogs can learn new tricks and I think, I don't think there is an age where you can't teach them stuff. It changes how you train them a little bit, you know. But teach that dog to blood trail. I mean you're not going to take anything away from that dog and it will learn what to do. I mean the first dog that I trained to to shed hunt was a golden retriever. I had several dogs ago and I think she was five or six, probably five when I started teaching her. And it wasn't any different than taking an eight week old pup and being like, you know, here's what we're starting with. We're stringing together these behaviors and you daisy chain them together until you finally have that, that skill set. Then you work on that. So train that eight year old lab. That lab will love it. It'll help you find some deer.

[Clay Newcomb]

Excellent, Great, excellent.

[Phil]

Let's call, it's called there guys.

[Clay Newcomb]

Well, hey, thanks everybody for joining meteater Radio Live. I'm certain that this is probably one of the best ever.

[Brent Reeves]

100. You got my vote.

[Clay Newcomb]

Yeah. Let's vote on. Just raise your hand if you think this is probably the best ever. Media Radio Live. Oh, Phil, we got here. Hey, everybody, thank you so much. I can't wait to tune in next week. And you know what? Keep the wild places wild because that's where the bears live.

[Brent Reeves]

Case pocket.

[Clay Newcomb]

Now.

[Jake Hofer]

You'Ve got the land, you've got the deer, but the season's closing in and your mind's racing with more questions than answers. I'm Jay Kofer and this is back 40, a limited series show on Wire to Hunt, part of Meat Eaters Podcast Network. Each episode I'll be asking eight whitetail hunting pros a focused, thought provoking question about hunting and land management. How do I hunt the best part of the farm with less than ideal access?

[Clay Newcomb]

Should you?

[Brent Reeves]

That's what the real question is.

[Tony Peterson]

Stand without good access is not a good stand.

[Jake Hofer]

Search Wire to Hunt and hit that follow button to listen to back 40.

[Clay Newcomb]

Now this is an I Heart podcast.