Ep. 417: Backwoods University – Lost Stories

00:00:02
Speaker 1: Welcome to Backwoods University, a place where we focus on wildlife, wild places and the people who dedicate their lives to conserving both. Big shout out to Onyx Hunt for their support of this podcast. I’m your host, Lake Pickle, and we are officially in February now. Now, I don’t know about y’all, but for us here in Mississippi, February was always this kind of month where you would catch yourself looking around and wondering what to do. He can’t deer hunt, that’s over. He can’t duck hunt. That ended in January two. I suppose you could dream about spring turkey season, but that doesn’t start till March. Well, I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do. Over these past few months, you and I have had the privilege of listening to some pretty incredible and fascinating folks. Grizzly bear specialist and marine biologists, botanist and beekeepers. We have heard from a wide spectrum, and that’s one of the things that I’ve come to love about doing this show. One drawback that I have found, however, is that if you haven’t noticed, Backwoods University is a pretty stick to the point kind of show. We don’t really go down any rabbit holes, which I think is overall good. But sometimes in these interviews I will hear a real hum dinger of a story, but it’s just slightly off topic and I’m left scratching my head wondering what to do with this incredible piece of content. Well, I found the solution. In this episode, We’re going to go through some of the interviews from past BU episodes, and here’s some pretty awesome tales that didn’t quite make the original episode. I am supremely confident that you’ll be glad we found somewhere to put these. Let’s dive in. Our first story is gonna set the tone for this whole episode. From the time that I first heard it sitting across from Tom Parker and his cabin in Western Montana, I knew I had to find a way to share it. It’s simply too good. Y’all remember Tom from the Grit episode, and his story is about getting run up a tree by an angry grizzly bear. In his decades spent guiding in the Bob Marshall Wilderness in Mission Mountains. I still maintain the opinion that Tom is one of the most interesting humans I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting Well. In the midst of that grizzly conversation, Tom also mentioned that he once was charged by bull bison while he was working on a mountain lion research project in Yellowstone. I told y’all, this guy is interesting. Well anyway, I was so intrigued that I asked Tom to share the story, and luckily for me and for y’all, I was still recording when he did.

00:02:35
Speaker 2: Going back to the bison and Yellowstone, most people do get to enjoy all those experiences seeing those big animals on the landscape, But there are some people that have what I’m gonna call an inappropriate and ill informed perspective about you know, there’s just kind of act like cow’s. I mean, they must be fairly safe to be around. I’m here to tell you that the closest calls of my career have been with bison and in Yellowstone. You know, I work there on research projects, and I’m here to tell you that a rogue bull bison surprised at close range they’re.

00:03:18
Speaker 3: Coming for you.

00:03:19
Speaker 1: Would you mind telling those stories?

00:03:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was. This was in ninety I want to say ninety nine. I was working on the Lions Study in Yellowstone, and we were doing what’s called a predation sequence, which is where we follow a known lion, one that’s marked. You know, we’ve caught it, it’s got a collar on it, and we’re following that thing through the landscape wherever it takes us. And what you do is you don’t get close enough to this animal that you impact or effect it’s behavior. In other words, you gauge your distance, you know, out of sight, out of sound, stay far enough back on the track, but you follow it through three large prey kills and whatever small prey kills may occur in that time. And I was following a female that had been injured by a cow elk and she had two offspring and they were forty to fifty pound offspring with it. And you know, we often spell each other on those predation sequence work because you know, it’s a lot of long distance and you’re on snow in the mountains. And my field partner Mike had said, you know, the other day, I was tracking this cat and she went down into the stage. It looked like she had you know, stalked close enough to make what we call the rush and take down on some elk, and actually there weren’t many deer in that country, but there had been a deer there, and he said she just seemed to like change her mind and not try to take any prey. And she hadn’t killed prey in quite a while. But he said, you know, there was the remains of a coyote in there that she went in and investigated, which I found very strange. She could have killed that coyote. You never know. She’s desperate. So I’m following this cat a few days later and I went way up on a ridge we called Mom’s Ridge, and it’s a big, you know, fairly steep ridge full of big bowlders that are some the size of this room. Many of them the size of the truck are smaller the size of a Volkswagen, but a lot of them roughly bison sized. And this is up, you know, a steep mountain slope. I hadn’t seen a bison track in a mile, you know, And there was some bison down in the bottom, and that we’d had a storm and the wind had blown off this ridge for this lion that I was tracking from way up on top of that mountain where she was hunting the day before she had started down that ridge, and you know, you’re supposed to stay with that track or at least try to piece it together where it’s blown out so that you don’t miss some prey kill that you’re going to document. And so I was really having trouble in this one area and all the boulders, you know, there’s quite a few of them with snow. Particularly, I was on what I’m going to call the leeward side of the boulders. So I was on a fairly narrow ledge on this ridge contouring trying to pick up where this cat had crossed so that I could verify, you know, it’s track, and it was headed down right ahead of me on this ledge. This boulder was a snowed under rogue bull bison. And this what happens is these bulls that are injured, old, not breeding anymore, they tend to go off from the other bison herds and groups and will go off up fairly high in the mountains to kind of die and be by themselves. And these old bull elk, I’ve seen him do the same thing.

00:07:38
Speaker 1: I thought about it when you said that it sounds like an old bull elk.

00:07:41
Speaker 3: Yep, they just kind of get off.

00:07:42
Speaker 4: They do.

00:07:43
Speaker 2: They don’t want to be around the others. And what I thought was a boulder on this ledge I’m on and it’s a fairly steep drop off about ten twelve feet to the earth below me off this ledge all this sudden there’s an explosion of no, and it isn’t much further than the corner of the room.

00:08:04
Speaker 1: Oh goodness, Oh yeah, this I mean.

00:08:06
Speaker 2: And a bison, I mean, they’re like a rocket.

00:08:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, they’re fast, They’re relivingly.

00:08:11
Speaker 2: Fast, deceivingly fast. And this is a big bull and here’s this explosion. And I realized, I’m like, this bison’s gonna take me out. I just jumped right off that ledge.

00:08:22
Speaker 4: Oh gosh, Oh I did, and I land you know, I know how to land, and I landed, and I rolled quite away, and I didn’t hit any rocks or trees on the way down. And he couldn’t come down there for me. It was quite the drop off, and he ran out on the contour there, and it was as close to dying as I’ve ever come, right there.

00:08:47
Speaker 1: More so than any grizen counter. Oh yeah, let’s think about that last statement for a bit. Tom has been guiding the Bob Marshall Wilderness and the Mission Mountains since the nineteen seventies, and he’s spent the better part of his life in Grizzly Bear country. And yet the closest he ever came to dying was during an encounter with a rogue bull bison in Yellowstone wild I guess think twice before you go trying to pet one of those things I know Tom would advise against. For our next story, we’re gonna have to go way back back to the very beginning. Y’all may remember the first ever episode of Backwoods University. We studied the history of bison in the eastern United States, and in that episode you heard myself and Jeremy French from the Southeastern Grassland Institute hiked down to see a still very visible remnant of a bison trail that crossed a river. This conversation picks up while we’re still standing at that river in bison trail, and at that time Jeremy shared with me a fascinating piece of American history. This story is short, but it’s definitely worth sharing.

00:10:00
Speaker 5: Actually, a really cool historical story here too. Of this creek is called Caleb’s Creek, and Caleb was the son of one of the early settlers in Nashville. And they came up these waterways and I can’t remember which settler was, and they found this area and they picked this area and they were like, hey, Caleb, you know, I don’t know if you’re a parent, but I always say I think about this when I become a parent. We like this area. We want to settle this, but we need to go back south to go pick up supplies. Why don’t you live in this cave until it comes back? And they don’t come back for like a year, and he this is pre settlement, right, So this is like the wilderness. There’s tribes here, there’s like, you know, probably still bison extent. And he goes and he lives in this cave. That’s just that way if the water wasn’t so high. Sometimes it’s pretty low and you can just hop rock across it. But and he lives in his cave for like a year until his group comes back and gets him. He’s gotta hunt all his own food. He’s gotta avoid getting murdered, like in like sixteen.

00:11:12
Speaker 1: Maybe there’s not a lot of details to go along with this story, but what is known other than what Jeremy shared with us can be found through researching the history of the Wessington Plantation. The boy’s name was Caleb Winters, and he was known as one of Robertson County, Tennessee’s earliest settlers. And to give this some contexts, Robertson County is just north of Nashville, and this took place back in the late seventeen hundreds, back when there was still a few bison roaming around and the entire place was truly wild. As Jeremy stated, Caleb spent about a year’s time living in a small cave. It was said that he was an outstanding hunter, and he lived the entire year off of wild game. After his family returned, they built a cabin. It was just across the creek from the entrance of the very cave that he’d lived in. In his honor, they named the creek Caleb’s Creek, as well as the cave Winter’s Cave. I don’t know about y’all, but if my parents left me to survive in a cave in the wild for a year, I would be telling them that naming a creek in a cave after me was the least they can do. Just imagine what all kind of wild stuff that boy saw during the year spent living in that cave. I would wager he saw that bison trail in action. Heck, maybe he even hunted a bison there. Who knows. What I can tell you is it was pretty crazy to hear that story as I was standing there looking at the entrance of that cave. Wild random fun fact before we move on, did y’all know that several of the roads that run through Nashville, as well as other roads in North Tennessee, were originally bison trails? Crazy? Right, Use that one next time you need a conversation starter. Moving on for our next story, We’re going to keep the action level high as we turn our attention back to eight big and Wild animals. Y’all will probably remember Casey Anderson from the second Grizzly episode that we did. Casey’s a lifelong outdoorsman. He’s a naturalist, a hunter, and he’s a person who has spent his career explaining nature to the world. We heard all kinds of wild tales from Casey in that episode, and he told me several more, including this one about an experience he had on the cat My coast that I’ve not been able to stop thinking about.

00:13:25
Speaker 6: First off, the historic relationship with humans. So the bears on the cat My coast almost have never been hunted. They see very few people, so they haven’t learned to fear people at all. In fact, it’s actually one of those things like is it that they haven’t learned to fear people, or isn’t that they haven’t learned to do anything with people, Like, you know, they have no feeling for people at some level. In fact, it’s so bizarre. Sometimes I’ll be standing there and they’ll walk right by me and they won’t even look at you, like you’re a rock, Like you’re just not on the radar. They just don’t care that they treat you the same way thing with a fox or a raw you know, literally, yeah, you know.

00:14:05
Speaker 1: The thing that stuck out to me is in one of those videos that kept by, like you’re like observing this mother and two cubs, and like at home, you’re taught like that’s code read that is what you don’t want to see, like mother and cubs, like get away, that’s the one that’s gonna charge you. Like how do you even learn to assess that situation? To know like, I can go watch her and as long as I keep my distance or whatever it is you do like it, we’ll be fine.

00:14:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, it’s hard.

00:14:29
Speaker 6: It’s hard, and especially when you flip flop between the two ecosystems. Sure sure, as you are dealing with what looks like the same animal but completely different mindset. It happened. It wasn’t something that I went and did in an experiment with It was actually the other way around, and I put myself in the position of being there and had mothers with cubs bringing their cubs over to me. This sounds ridiculous again, and I’m gonna I’m gonna just add this on here because there’s you know, movies like Grizzly Man and stuff like that. Is one thing you can never do is forget that no matter where the bear is, it’s capable of killing you. And those cubs and mom, you know, the mom with cubs in Alaska are certainly capable of killing you. But what they’ll do sometimes is they’ll bring those cubs over close to you on purpose because they’ve realized that people kind of act of kind of like kind of like the safety net. Because there’s other bears, particular males who are a little less apt to be comfortable around people. So if the cubs are close to you, then the males less that have to come near them, and so they start using you. And it’s so strange and it’s very uncomfortable in the beginning.

00:15:39
Speaker 1: I would like man trying to put myself in that situation. Like if I saw it, if I saw a mother and two cubs approaching, I’d be like, I need to go right now, and.

00:15:48
Speaker 6: Most people would, I mean, and I think that’s that’d be the right feeling to have your instincts. But the other good thing is that I’ve spent so much time around bears and understand their body language. Is that you know when there’s ill intent on a bear’s face basically, I mean, it is a billboard telling you like, I’m uncomfortable, and if not, it’s vocalizing, it’s chomping its jaws, it’s hoofing at you, it’s doing something true. And when they come over and their ears are just flat, relaxed, and their body language is a really tense and you just see this like that, they are actually more getting more comfortable as they get closer to do It’s so strange, but it’s true. Yeah, and so at the same time, you just realize it’s a unique opportunity and it is a little intoxicating when you’re there next to these animals that are a thousand pounds and you can just go sit there amongst them and they they just don’t care if you’re doing the right thing. I mean, I think it’s a two way street too. I mean, if you go in there with bad energy and you’re all uptight, you’re a billboard too. You know, you’re showing your intention. But if you can go in there and just kind of relax yourself and realize that they’re at a safe distance in some level and doing the right thing, and it’s just so cool to be part of that true world. I can’t explain it, man.

00:16:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it sounds so crazy, it does.

00:17:00
Speaker 6: And it’s why, you know, there’s so many times I’m like, I just gotta I wish I could take people there and have them experiences. But at the same time, it’s like that’s the right.

00:17:07
Speaker 3: Thing to do too.

00:17:07
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, the thing is, it’s like you’re able to do that because you’ve spent so many hours around these animals that you it’s like some of the best archery hunters. I know, they spent so much time because like bohunt and you gotta be close, right, Yeah, So they spent a lot of time being close to that animal and they can just read that animal’s body language so well, Like they know when they come in and relax, they know when they’re tense. They know, like I can draw back now like this this animal is about spook. This animals chilled out, Like they just spend so much time close to them, they can pick up on that. And you’ve spent so much time around these bears that you’re just able to read that. So well, what’s going on?

00:17:47
Speaker 3: You know?

00:17:47
Speaker 6: No, I mean definitely, there’s no doubt about it. And you know, and I’ve had so many close encounters, and I’ve had some that are obviously not been positive. You can see it coming right how so just the way that they start reacting, their body language starts to change. You’re always paying attention to the wind, You’re always I mean, it’s just like anything, just like I said, whitetail buck. If you know whit tail bucks, you’ve been around all the time, you get honed into these little tiny things. Sometimes you don’t even know why you’re doing what you’re doing, but there are these little subtle hints that they’re giving you and you and you don’t even know. It’s almost instinctual, and you just start doing these same same things to counter the moment. And with bears, man, it’s it’s the same.

00:18:29
Speaker 3: I mean, you just you get.

00:18:30
Speaker 6: I’ve been in such tense situations where a bear is looking at me and I know that I need to back off slowly and pull my eyes away from it and then and that’ll be the right thing to do. But I’ve I’ve also had time for bears are being aggressive towards me. And I looked at that bear. I don’t even know why, and I’ve locked eyes with it and I’ve charged at it and ran it away and it’s and I don’t even know why, but I know that I see something in that bear. It’s insecure and maybe it’s it’s thinking about it. And I just want you know what, No, I’m the boss today and I’m going to show you that I am. Sounds ridiculous, but it is this subtle game of body language poker that you’re playing out there with all animals. And it sounds probably the most crazy because you’re I’m playing it with an animal that can kill you.

00:19:16
Speaker 1: I feel like this needs to be said. Casey is a professional and he’s been dealing with bears for a long long time. So all the stuff that he talked about doing, don’t try that at home and think what you will about me. But I don’t imagine I would be holding my ground if I saw Mama Griz and cubs walking my direction, and I certainly wouldn’t charge you one. Thanks for the wild tales, Casey. For our next story, we’re going to a very recent guest, mister Jim Cruise, the lifelong duck hunter. In this story, Jim tackles two very common pieces of duck hunter lore.

00:19:51
Speaker 3: Video is very telling.

00:19:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know.

00:19:54
Speaker 7: I was looking at one that my wife did last weekend. She was thinking there were four of us shooting, and she was standing behind us working the dog, and a flight of teal came in right to left. I was on the left end, my son was on the right end, and two guests were in the middle of the line, and it was like we had choreographed it. Bam bam bam bam down the line. This is a teal came across, and of course, when you’re shooting like that.

00:20:24
Speaker 3: You don’t. You don’t realize it. But that’s exactly how it was.

00:20:27
Speaker 7: Bam bam, bam bam, one, two, three, four and three till fell and then the I guess there were two ducks left in the flock when I got on my end. One of them was a big white shoveler. I picked him out at a heartbeat. I couldn’t pass him up, so I shot that one. But it just looking back at the video, wasn’t nearly like I remembered it because it just happened so quick.

00:20:53
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah. See. Now now I’ve got to ask you another question because you said something there that I want to ask you about.

00:21:00
Speaker 3: I shouldn’t say.

00:21:00
Speaker 1: I know a lot of folks that do it. I know a lot of folks that say that they want shoot a shoveler.

00:21:06
Speaker 3: I hadn’t met any yet. I know a lot who say they won’t.

00:21:13
Speaker 1: But you you’ve heard that.

00:21:14
Speaker 3: I don’t know my life.

00:21:16
Speaker 1: I don’t know so bad. I was wondering about that too. I was wondering how long that’s been going on. I think the Northern shoveler might be the most widely maligned duck, and I’ve never been to I’ve never been able to figure out.

00:21:27
Speaker 3: Why I let the hens pass.

00:21:30
Speaker 7: Sure, I let those brown shovelers pass, but a big drake he doesn’t pass.

00:21:35
Speaker 3: They’re pretty duck, they’re beautiful.

00:21:37
Speaker 1: Why do you think they get such a bad rap?

00:21:41
Speaker 7: It’s just people having something to talk about, that’s all I can figure.

00:21:48
Speaker 3: They decoy, Well, they’re pretty colored. What’s not to like about.

00:21:53
Speaker 1: I don’t know.

00:21:54
Speaker 3: I like the variety. I do too.

00:21:56
Speaker 1: If you’ve been around duck hunting culture for any length of time, especially down here in the Southeast, then you probably know that the northern shoveler getting looked down upon as a tale as old as time, and frankly I’ve never understood it, and apparently Jim doesn’t either. So that is common duck ore number one. In the next part of Jim’s story, we’re going to tackle another commonly heard duck hunting myth.

00:22:19
Speaker 7: Probably twenty five years ago, my father invited the then CEO of Ducks Unlimited and they’re chief biologists, to come down and duck hunt with us. We were in the process that time putting our property under conservation easement, so we were in contact with du negotiating all that. Anywhere invited them to come down and had a real good hunt, and we had shot mallards and gadwalls, but also six or seven ringnecks over course of two days. And I think we had held the ducks we shot the first day and decide we’ll clean them all the second day. Well, the deused biologist guy named Bruce bat at the time, kind of eased up to me and said, hey, let me ask you something.

00:23:12
Speaker 3: I said, what is that?

00:23:13
Speaker 7: Bruce is a Canadian guy, really good guy, very knowledgeable. He said, would you mind if I took all these ring necks? No, of course, you’re welcome to them and whatever. I said, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody ask me that before. And he said, well, in my opinion, they had the best flavor of any duck. I said, well, help yourself, and I was kind of had been educated that they’re not your top duck to eat. Oh yeah, well they really are surprising. My wife folks to cook ducks a lot, sure, and she likes to smoke them particularly, and her opinion, ring neck is the best one there is on the smoker.

00:24:00
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:24:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, see I think that too. I think I think folks hear certain things their whole lives, and they just get told that ring necks are bad to eat, shovelers are bad to eat.

00:24:11
Speaker 7: But again, don’t get me wrong, I still love the mallards and the pent tails and the big ducks all the best. But I think some of those so called less desirable species taken undeserved hit.

00:24:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like them just fine.

00:24:27
Speaker 3: We get into the tailtelling stage now.

00:24:29
Speaker 7: I went out on New Year’s Eve last week by myself.

00:24:35
Speaker 3: My wife was sick. She didn’t want to go.

00:24:37
Speaker 7: I said, well, I’m going to go ahead anyway, if you’re okay, and she said, oh, yeah, go ahead. So we had a decent flight that morning is a pretty day, and I can’t remember what order I shot them in, but I had a wind up with a wood duck and a mallard and a ring neck and a gadwall and a wigeon. So that’s five all drakes. And I looked at that and I said, well, I’m gonna try to get six drakes, but I’m gonna try to get number six different species.

00:25:10
Speaker 3: From what I already had.

00:25:12
Speaker 7: So I get this pair of pintails to come in, and I’m in my mind looking at that big old drake I can see his feet and that long sprig sticking out, and he’s at about twenty five yards and I missed him.

00:25:24
Speaker 3: Clean in the.

00:25:27
Speaker 7: World did I do that? But I went, well, well, you know, maybe something else will come along. Fifteen minutes later, a drake green wing teal comes by and I didn’t miss him. My dog brings him in, climbs up the ladder onto the boat, and I see that flash you don’t see very often. It’s a banded dream wing teal. So I’d never shot a banded teal before, so that was kind of a big deal.

00:25:53
Speaker 3: But also on a.

00:25:55
Speaker 7: Day when I got a royal flush on ducks, so that was a big These ducks you ought to appreciate every one of them for some reason, whether it’s how they look, or how they fly, or how they decoy, how they taste, whatever it is, they all have special attributes that we need to revere.

00:26:16
Speaker 1: Going back to duck hunting culture, if you’ve been around it, you’ve probably heard people list off certain species of ducks as being not fit to eat, and a ring neck is commonly on that list. And how ironic and funny is it that a duck biologist said that not only were they fit to eat? But it was his favorite duck to eat. I don’t know. It just makes you wonder if half the folks that make these claims have ever actually tried cooking and eating these ducks to begin with. And how about Jim killing a royal flush of ducks for his limit one day and that last one being banded. I bet that’s the only time he’s ever been glad he missed a pintail. For our final story of this episode, we’re returning to my personal favorite topic that we have ever covered, the life work of Cook. That was episode four of this show, and I would highly encourage you to go listen to it if you haven’t yet. This story comes from an incredible woman named Miss Kathy Shropshire. You heard her referenced in that episode a couple of times. Pay close attention to this final story because, for one, I find it inspiring, and two, it’s actually gonna set us up for the next episode as we moved towards the spring. To my knowledge, you’re the only person that’s played Fanny Cook in a film.

00:27:27
Speaker 8: I think so, Yes, I believe so.

00:27:31
Speaker 1: How did that happen?

00:27:32
Speaker 8: Well, Bill, a friend of mine, a Robbie Fisher was working on that film. That was a Gulf Islands National Seashore film that they were doing in relation to the one hundredth anniversary of the National Parks. And because Miss Cook had been involved with letter writing and support and getting that done, Robbie wanted to have her featured as you know somebody who was involved. Well, she asked me, if I do it, and people ask me for all these things, are you usually say yes before I think through it, clearly, But.

00:28:04
Speaker 1: I got you to come to this interview.

00:28:06
Speaker 8: Right right, yeah, right, y’all What am I thinking? But it didn’t require that I say anything. So we we did film that. There’s a small segment in there about miss Cook and writing the letters and supporting the Cafellen se Sure. So yeah, as far as I know, I’m the only person.

00:28:22
Speaker 1: On a personal level, obviously, Fanny Cook means something to you. Why is she so important to you?

00:28:31
Speaker 8: Well, you know, she didn’t tut her own horn. She had a mission when she decided she wanted to develop the mist Department, wile Offishers and Parks or Game and Fish Commission. At the time, it wasn’t about her. It was about getting that done and then getting a museum and providing education, and so she was not one of those people who was out there waving the flag and saying look at me.

00:28:53
Speaker 1: Which is not something that you hear a lot.

00:28:55
Speaker 8: Of this day and age, right right, everybody wants credit for everything.

00:28:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, that’s true.

00:29:00
Speaker 8: Well, I just think it’s one person can make a difference. And you know, maybe that difference isn’t that you’ll be a Fanny Cook, or that you’ll be a Rachel Carson, or that you’ll be something else. But if you, as an individual can reach the person who then is the Fanny Cook or is the Rachel Carson, just follow your passion and be open and do what you can. I guess I’m not going to be Jane Goodall. I Am not going to be Rachel Carson. But maybe I’ve exposed somebody to those agendas that then will be that person who takes that step. I’d like to think that.

00:29:40
Speaker 1: It’s a good thought too. I mean, because again you pick up, especially in that book, like all these influences that Fanny has at a young age, you know, from the people at the Smithsonian or father, I mean, it lists several of us. To your point, it’s you know, when her father was telling her by passenger pigeons that she was younger. There’s no way he could have known that she needn’t turn out, you know, But it didn’t matter. You know. He was investing those principles into his daughter. And look how important that was down the road. One person can make a difference. If there was ever a person that was living proof of that, it’s Fanny Cook. Heck, if it wasn’t for her, we might not have any game animals to hunt here in Mississippi. And I don’t know what I would do with myself if we didn’t have that. I also thought so much about Miss Cathy’s perspective on her own impacts. Not all of us are gonna be the Fanny Cooks or out of loop holes of the world, and that’s okay. Not all of us are going to get credit for the work that we do, and you know what, that’s okay too. What’s important is that we do what’s right, we follow our passions, and maybe we’ll inspire other people around us. I catch myself thinking all the time what my life would look like had my dad never taken me deer hunting, or if my friend Keith never took me turkey hunting. Your impact matters, whether you realize it or not. And speaking of impacts that matter, I said that this last story would tear us up for the next episode, So this is your homework until then. Think about what or who got you interested in wildlife and wildlife conservation, because in the next episode we’re going to be learning about some life altering conservation work, how it started, how it was carried out, and how it’s still benefiting us to this very day. I want to thank all of you for listening to Backwoods University as well as Bear Grease in This Country Life. If you liked this episode, share it with someone this week. I don’t care if you like them or not, and stick around. There’s a whole lot more on the way.