Ep. 455: This Country Life – A Father’s Gift

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Speaker 1: Welcome to This Country Life. I’m your host, Brent Reeves from coon hunting to trotlining and just general country living. I want you to stay a while as I share my experiences in life lessons. This Country Life is presented by Case Knives from the store More Studio on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast the airways have to offer. All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I’ve got some stories to share. A father’s gift. Reeve Hanson, world famous meat eater, sound engineer and the brains behind the sound of This Country Life podcast told me if I tell one more Turkey story, she’s gonna drive down here and beat me up. But what she don’t know is I got another one coming. It’s gonna put the bowl on Brentley’s twenty twenty six Turkey season. But first I gotta get to Pennsylvania to do it. So until then, we’re gonna talk about this. I read a story the other day that was sent in by a listener, and even though it’s good, nothing really set it dramatically. Apart from the others that you folks send me, there were no death define descriptions of outdoor adventure or world record trophies, just a simple story that gave me pause and a desire to share it with you in the hopes that you’d get out of it what I did. Mike Ramos, a lifelong resident of Colorado, sent this one, and in his words, in my voice, here we go. There have been many gifts in my life, but none more precious and the one my father gave me. The true experience of the outdoors, what it feels like, what it teaches, and what it leaves behind in you long after the trip is over. My father, Richard de Guzman Ramos, was born July sixth, nineteen thirty two, into an immigrant Filipino family that came to the United States in nineteen twenty seven. His early life was both remarkable and painfully difficult. At only eight years old, he experienced something no child should ever endure, watching his mother pass away after the birth of his sister. That kind of loss doesn’t leave you, It shapes you, and I believe in many ways it helped shape the man my father became, strong, driven, deeply connected to the healing power of the natural world. Growing up, my dad was mischievous in the best way of curious fearless, always explored. He He rarely went anywhere on his scooter without his Red Rider B being gung roaming through Colorado like it was his own personal kingdom, from the mountaintops near Golden all the way down to the city. Even then he had that internal engine. So many people never developed the pull to explore, to see what was over the next hill, to find out for himself. The early nineteen forties were not an easy time to be Filipino in America. With the world at war. My father was constantly challenged, mistaken for Japanese, and treated unfairly because of it. That daily pressure could have broken him, but he didn’t. It hardened him and taught him how to defend himself, and eventually that toughness earned him the prestigious title of Golden Gloves Boxing Champion of Colorado and school. He became one of the most decorated Army JROTC cadets in Denver, and it was there that he fell in love with one of his lifelong favorites, the m one garand chambered in thirty o six. That rifle wasn’t just a firearm to him. It represented discipline, precision, and the responsibility that comes with that power. Then life threw him another turning point. One day, while riding his motor scooter to work as a dishwasher, he was struck by a car. My grandfather took him to a doctor, someone known for working on bones, and that visit introduced him to chiropractic care, which would become his calling. My father went on to become doctor Richard Ramos, d C. In that career, healing people was not just his work, it was his identity. But even as he healed people indoors, the outdoors still called him. With his love for marksmanship and his shooting team, the High Plane Shooters, he became incredibly skilled. He competed at a national level in both small boar and large boar rifle disciplines, and eventually he passed that knowledge down to us, six boys and one girl, teaching us how to shoot and hunt properly, safely, and respectfully, and to fish at any opportunity that we could. That was the beginning of my own education, the kind that doesn’t come from books, but comes from early mornings and cold fingers, sharp wind, and learning how to pay attention. Comes from seeing God’s creation up close and realizing you’re small in the best way. We spent every boast season headed into the rockets. I’ve always said I was born on the plains of Colorado, but I was raised in the mountains. We would stay in camp while Dad disappeared into the timber chasing deer and Elkin’s boat, an exploration that didn’t stop in Colorado. Eighteen sixty nine, he took his first of many trips to Alaska, determined to bow hunt moose with his herders take down recurve. He never took a moose with his bow, but he was successful on countless other adventures, chasing elk and deer back home, and through it all he kept his sense of humor, because with seven kids you almost have to. One memory still makes me laugh out loud. Dad had found a new canyon he wanted to explore, and we took our two wheel drive motorcycle, a Rocan trail breaker, and I must have been around nine years old. We were walking up a dark timber ravine, climbing over falling logs and moving carefully because we had seen bear sign earlier. Then we reached this moss covered old miner’s cabin, dilapidated overgrown and just really barely standing. Dad was ahead of me, and somehow he knew exactly what I was thinking. What if something living in there? He creeps up to the cabin and I’m about fifteen yards behind him, and he peeks inside. Then he spins around and yells bear, bear, and takes off running, And all I heard was bear. My nine year old legs lost like rockets. I spread it over logs and stumbled through the brush, hard pounding, convinced my life was over there behind me, I heard laughter. I turned around and there was my dad, draped over a log, trying to catch his breath, laughing so hard he could barely stand. That was my first real introduction to my father’s sense of humor, equal parts fearless and ridiculous. In the nineteen sixties, Dad also became incredibly proficient at calling coats and shooting jack rabbits on the run. He was a master caller, using hand calls, long before electronic calls existed. He kept logs of every coat he took, and he had a cold, he hunted them only from October to February. Once he called in a female that came in heavy full of pups and he wouldn’t shoot her. After that, he refused to hunt couchs during that time of year. There was a respect in him that people don’t always understand. He wasn’t just taking he was participating in a world that he loved. Dad was a member of the Colorado Bow Hunters Association, and because of his proficiency, they asked him to write an article for their journal related to the Colorado Pooping Young Record Books. I still have a copy of it today. During those months, with his calls and his skill, he averaged over a hundred couchs per season for the fur market. He also had a funny way of waking us up in the early hunts. He’d walk into the room and grab you by your big toe and say are you coming? And I always was because a man of morning treat hot coffee and a doughnut. While we drove into the country searching for the next spot, always mindful of the wind, and when snow covered the ground, Dad would grab one of his favorite rifles. It’s thirty all to six a springfield three to a three painted white. He’d call the coats in and let us kids take the first shot. And we missed more than we hit, but Dad was always there, willing and able to clean it up. I don’t remember a cold ever getting away. I can honestly say I’ve seen more dead coats than most people have ever seen alive. And it wasn’t until I was thirteen that I finally settled down enough to make an accurate shot. That was my first real experience with buck fever or what I call cold fever. Got adrenaline rush when you see them sneaking in man sometimes even a full run, the heart’s hammery, like it’s like it’s trying to climb out of your chest. Dad went out most mornings while I was getting ready for school. I’d wake up and he’d already beg in the nineteen seventies. With the numbers he put down, he could make two hundred to three hundred dollars every morning. But I didn’t know was that he was rat holing that money, saving it quietly in a slush fund right up until I graduated high school. The day after graduation, he called me, He said, come down to the office. Dad and I drove down to our tiny hometown sporting goods store and met with owner Ray Jones. Ray and I made eye contact. He reached under the counter, pulled out a box of cartridges, and then set a revolver on the counter, a Ruger Security six stainless three point fifty seven magnet. Dad nudged it towards me and said, learn to shoot it. It could save your life. Then he said the words that changed everything. We’re going to Alaska, and it was all funded by colds. I was over the moon. I couldn’t believe it. I was heading to the last Great Frontier. The trip was one week of hunting cariboo and one week of floating a wild Alaska river, fishing for salmon and trouting. Alaska hit me like a dream. We landed in Anchorage and then jumped on a floatplane and flew for two hours over glaciers and mountain peaks, spotting doll sheep and mountain goats along the way. Eventually we passed over a ridge and in the distance I saw a tiny lake tucked into the tundra, and as we descended, cariboo were running everywhere like something out of old outdoor life magazines or TV shows. We landed, unloaded our gear and the pot of ask if you got everything. We looked at our two Douffel bags and two packs, and me holding a bowl, Dad holding a rifle, and said, yep, I think we got it. He said, I’ll see you in two weeks. No radio, just my father and me and I watched that the haveveling beaver lift off. The sound got fainter, and the plane became a dot, and then it disappeared completely. We threw our packs on and started hiking, looking for a place to camp. I stopped to catch my breath and I looked up and no sound, no sight of the plane, and then the wilderness spoke. Wolves began to howl, and in that moment it hit me we were truly alone. We set up camp, and then Dad and I climbed the ridge to glass the tunder and we saw blackberries in the distance. Eating berries, and caribou were everywhere. The next morning we picked blueberries and cooked them down and made our own serve for pancakes, and we had had coffee while the Alaska tundrus spread out in front of us. Were we were living like kings. Then we spotted him on a far ridge that looked closed but was nearly a mile away, a big bull with double shovels. Dad said, go get him. I grabbed my bowl, and I learned quickly you can’t keep up with the cariboo on the ground, similar to walking on a water bed. It made for a long day and that night Dad and I were laughing and I was crying. The leg cramps, the spasms, the pain was nearly unbearable, and my futile temple. But the night was short and daylight returned quickly. The next morning we were ready again. The next day we saw more bulls moving towards us. Dad came with me this time, and his rifle would be my backup. We looked wide to keep the wind right, and I crept through sparse cover, waiting. My heart was pounding, my ears thrilled. The bulls fed closer, and all I could see horns. I drew my bowl and released, only to watch my arrow fall embarrassingly shortened. I walked up to retrieve it, with the only thing injured being my pride. Dad came down the hill and said, over the next ridge, I spotted in another herd. We climbed and peeked over, and my breath stopped to see a horns, twelve bulls together. There was no cover and no way to close the distance with a bowl, so it was Dad’s turn. We laid on the tunder and watched him move closer, and when they finally turned broadside, Dad settled in behind his custom thirty five wheeling and sent a nozzle to petition right where it needed to go. I heard took off down a small ravine, and the bull Dad hit was pumping life out of both sides. They hit the bottom and they started up again, and I ran. The closest bull to me was about eighty yards way out of bowl range back then, so I pulled up my Ruger Security six. I held on his chest and I fired and the bull dropped. I stood there, stunned. A follow up shot anchored him there for good. I looked up and saw Dad’s bullet fallen only steps away, two bulls together. When we walked up to them, I was overwhelmed with how big they were, how beautiful. Dad’s was a double shovel, of mine was a single, but enormous. I was on top of the world. The pack hour was two miles back to camp, mostly uphill, and at eighteen strong and in shape, I still wasn’t prepared. We estimated those packs around one hundred pounds each. We made it back, knowing we had to do it again for the rest of the meat, hide and the horns. The next days we’re Phillis, processing and fleshing hides and joining the scenery and checking the meat down by the lake. We also fished because the lake was full of rainbow trout and Dolly Varden. That memory still echoes like it happened yesterday. Cariboo lawn in a pan, fresh trout, and wolves howling in the distance. It was simply amazing. And that was only one of many adventures. I went off to college and during that time Dad introduced us to a new friend and we listened to his stories about Africa, bow hunting, safari expeditions, Kpe, buffalo bull elephants, lines, planes, game. It mesmerized me. I wanted to go, but it felt out of reach financially and regrettably. During that time, my parents separated. Dad moved to Washington State to continue his practice. I stayed in Colorado and kept hunting the Rockies, continuing the gift my father placed in my hands long before I understood its value. Years later, hunting with a family friend who wants bow hunted with my dad, I took my first bull elk with archery equipment ten yards. Everything Dad taught me, every lesson, every moment was in that shot. Then life changed. I started my own family, and I got the news that Dad was diagnosed with cancer. We talked often during that time about Africa, and one of my father’s greatest pieces of advice replayed in my head. If you wait for some day to make your dreams come true, that day will never come. Time waits for no one. One day, my brother, also a chiropractor working with Dad, called and said, you’d better come to the house. Dad’s not doing well. And on a cold, gloomy day in February two thousand and nine, I lost my mentor, my best friend, in the corner stool of everything that I knew. It took time to recover to understand that the gift was still there even after he was gone. I raised my own two kids, my son Tyler and daughter Morgan, with the same outdoor values that Dad gave me of them at five, with gun safety and the gift of the outdoors, what it offers, what it teaches, and what it heals. Then one day my brother Jim called and said, you’ve got a gift coming. Make sure you’re home. A few days later, a registered package arrived at Inside under glass was a nickel plated thirty to six cartridge with a handwritten note, Dad is always with us. One of Dad’s patients, now my brother’s patient. Handloaded these cartridges and sent one to each sibling, all seven of us. Inside each cartridge was a portion of my father’s ashes. So fast forward to twenty seventeen, I attended an NRA banquet and during the auction, a trip to Africa came up. My loving wife started bidding because she knew it was a dream of mine and my father’s. Into my surprise, we won. A year later, we were on our way to Africa with Dad on another adventure. And ever since, on every journey, my dad, my kid’s grandfather, has been with us every step, every trail, every sunrise. I learned so much from my father, not only about life, but about the true gift of the outdoors. And now I’m passing it to my children and someday to my grandchildren so they can carry at four because that is what my father gave me. And according to Mike Raymows, one of seven sharing the father’s gift from Richard, that’s just how that happened. Yesterday was Mother’s Day and Bailey and I shared that day with our favorite mom. Alexis was our focus and even then didn’t get the attention she truly deserves for what she does. And after an early supper, I loaded the girls up for a bit of dessert and we went down to the local coffee shop for some overpriced coffee and a sweet treat to go with it. We grabbed a table and for the next thirty minutes we just sat and we talked about nothing in particular, dance, school and work being the regular subjects. Then Alexis asked me what the podcast was about, and I gave her a brief outline of the story that I just told y’all, and I asked her what gift has your father given you that you value the most? Now, I had my own answer in my head, but I kept it to myself while Bailey and I waited for her response. My work ethics, she finally said, and I agreed and told her that was exactly what I was thinking. My father in law is a good man and a shining example of years of hard work manifesting into success. And then I posed the same question to our dogt Bailey. What’s your answer if you have one, She said, I guess to always have a good time, regardless of what I’m doing. Daddy. You folks that have been listening a while know that that’s not from her father, but from her grandfather. Dad gifted that to me as a little boy with chores to finish that weren’t fun. Before we could go fishing, and he always said anything could be fun. If it wasn’t, I had to add it in there, she said, Dad, you know I hate running track, but I’ve made some good friends in there and we have a good time doing something that isn’t very much fun. That father’s gift is now working through its third generation. The gift that keeps on giving isn’t just a clever marketing phrase from RCA about their record players in the nineteen twenties. It’s a literal way to look at life in my father’s case, and an eye item that represents life shared with us in mics. Sometimes the smallest gestures can carry the heaviest loads for a long time. That’s good stuff. Hey waiting tells me that from now until May the eighteenth, if you want this Country life t shirts and hoodies. They’re fifty percent off at store dot themeateater dot com. Y’all check it out and until next week. This is Brent Reeves signing off. Y’all be careful.