Ep. 426: This Country Life – Bear, Brent, and Coon-Kabobs

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Speaker 1: Welcome to this country Life. I’m your host, Brent Reeves from coon hunting to trotlining and just in general country living. I want you to stay a while as I share my experiences in life lessons. This Country Life is presented by Case Knives from the store More Studio on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast that airways have to offer. All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I’ve got some stories to share Bear Brent and coon Kebobs from an article about a coon hunt that was published one hundred and ninety four years ago to one I actually went on last night. There’s a common thread between them. Chasing masked midnight marauders with hounds is older than this nation, and in a narrative that played out when all of America was still east of the Mississippi River. Our story begins with the protagonists sitting on a limb laughing at the hunter and ends with the hunter having the last laugh himself. They’rely confused, don’t be. I rarely know what I’m talking about until we get toward the end of these things, so we might as well get to it. When I moved from my home office out to my new studio digs provided by the good folks at store War. I ran across the items I’d misplaced and discovered others that heck, I didn’t even know I had, and one was a folded piece of paper someone had printed out for me. Now I can only assume it was at a Black Bear Bonanza or similar event, which is coming up March the seventh this year. By the way, I have no idea who I got it from, but from the way it’s folded, I apparently stuck it into my overalls and then hid it from myself in the old office upstairs. Now I do that a lot, hide things from myself, or Alexis gets up in the middle of the night and secretly moves all my stuff around, which is more than likely what’s really going on anyway. It’s a copy of an old story that was written in the first outdoor magazine published in America. It made me laugh a little bit reading it, and some consider it to have been an influence on our Tier one Southern humors, like Mark Twain and even mister Jerry Klower. But first, I’m going to tell you a little about the publication The American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine was a monthly American magazine published from eighteen twenty nine to eighteen forty four. In this monthly issued periodical, of the subject most focused on was horse racing, fishing, and field sports. It was founded by John Stuart Skinner of Baltimore, Maryland. It was the first magazine of its kind in the US. I wouldn’t be scared to say it was the Grandpappy to all outdoor media, including what you’re listening to now. It was published from eighteen twenty nine to eighteen forty four, and during that fifteen year period, there was a lot going on, especially you’re in Arkansas, like shedding the designation of territory and officially becoming the twenty fifth state in eighteen thirty six, which coincidentally was about the same time the Reeves family started making tracks down in what would become Cleveland County, U s. A. But four years prior to that great day of celebration, the American Turf Register published a letter to the editor entitled the Dog and the Rack Who a Fable. The letter was sent in by an anonymous penman who identified himself only as an Arkansas hunter in his clothing here in His prose is a fable within the tale of two soldiers, a dog and a coon near Fort Smith, a frontier military post established in eighteen seventeen. The event the writer describes was reported to the American Turf Register in eighteen thirty two. Here now is the letter as written before warning, there’s one cuss word in here, and I’m going to read it as the fellow wrote it. If you need a clue what it is. Before the kids listened Beaver’s build them every day. Also, these folks wrote way different back then, so try and hang on through these run on sentences. This dude wrote their worse than mine. Anyway. I like this and I’m going to read it to you now, mister Editor, Little Rock, Arkansas, August twenty ninth, eighteen thirty two. Mister editor, in one of the numbers of your sporting magazine, you mentioned some well authenticated facts of Captain Martin Scott’s skill in the use of firearms. An anecdote which I have heard in connection with the same circumstances, which though improbable, is so much to the point that I have been tempted to send it to you. When the Old Rifle Regiment was stationed at Fort Smith on the Arkansas, under the command of Major Bradford. Captain Scott, then Lieutenant Scott, was stationed at that post. He was perhaps a better shot at that time than he has ever been since, for since then he has received an injury in the right arm. I well know that it was very common for him at that time, in a misty day, to set up on the upper gallery or stoop of his orders and shoot the common chimney swallow on the wing with as unerring certainty as one of our backwoodsmen would hit the paper on a target at sixty yards at a beef shooting at this same post was another officer, a Lieutenant Van Schweringen, who, though much addicted to the pleasure of hunting, was a notoriously bad shot. And it appears that a dog had treated a raccoon in a very tall cottonwood, and after barking loud and long to no purpose, the coon expostulated with him and endeavored to convince him of the absurdity of his spending his time in labor at the foot of the tree, and assured him that he had not the most distant idea of coming down the tree, and begs him as a fellow creature, to leave him to the enjoyment of his rights. The dog replied naturally, but I fear not in the same conciliatory style all of the coon, but threatened him with the advent of someone that would bring him down. At this moment, a cracking in the cane indicated the approach of some individual. The coon asked the dog who it was, and the dog replied with some exultation that it was Lieutenant Van Swearingen. The coon laughed, and he laughed with a strong expression of scorn about his mouth. Lieutenant van Swearingen, indeed, he may shoot and be damned. Van Swearingen made five or six ineffectual shots and left the coon to the great discomfiture of the dog, still unscathed and laughing at the top of the tree. The dog smothered his chagrin by barking louder and louder, and the coon laughed louder and louder, until the merriment of the one and the mortification of the other was arrested by the approach of some other person. The coon inquired who it was, and the dog answered with a quickness that it was Scott who asked the coon evidently agitated, why Martin Scott? By God, the coon cried, in the anguish of despair, that he was a gone coon, rolled up the white of his eyes, and folded his paws on his chest, and tumbled out of the tree at the mercy of the dog, without making the least struggle for that life which he had but a few minutes before, so vulnagarly declared and believed was in no kind of danger. Signed an Arkansas hunter. Now, the moral of this fable is there is no elevation in this life that will justify us and indulging in unbecoming levity towards our inferiors. They wrote different back then. And now what I got out of that little tale was a lesson in humility, respect, and proper behavior. And I got myself a doosed to that. Earlier in the week, when my little buddy, who ain’t so little anymore, Baron Nukele, came to stay a couple of day, I said, Cassaday reves for an experimental exercise and coon hunting. Here’s how it all started. On February the fifth, I got a text from Barr John and I quote, do you think whaling could try a coon, I could shoot with my bow. Now, folks that know me know that I am forevermore smart whose self confidence is limited only by the limitations of what the folks around me are willing to put up with. And when Bear posed that question to me, I responded with the question, is do you think you can shoot with your bow a coon that whaling trees? I can only imagine His response to my immediate reply was like the majority of his takes on my ever feeble attempts at humor. Instead of being an adult for once in my life and answering a question like I’m not in the fifth grade, I’m willing to bet, he gave me a courtesy smile reminiscent of Mona Lisa while following up with I’ll call you in five. Now, I’ve watched this young man grow up for nearly a decade and a half and count among my biggest accomplishments when I’ve literally made him laugh out loud or gotten anything out of him beyond the Gary Cooper type. Yep. During the conversation, he called me and we started working on setting aside a couple of nights for his date with Destiny. February is a weird time to coon hunt with hounds, at least it is in Arkansas. The rut is usually in full swing by then and the boys are making tracks all over the country looking for the gowns with similar inclinations. Coon scent is everywhere, with boys going up and down every tree, in and out of every den and hollow log checking for sALS that are in heat. They cover a lot of territory looking for willing partners, way larger than the normally roam miles bigger in fact, so feeding is secondary to their desire to reproduce. How does that affect a coon hunting, I’m so glad you asked. By covering more ground, it makes it harder for house to find them in the usual places. It doesn’t mean that another boar could be in that place the others have abandoned. Could be, but not likely because once they are located with the female, especially if she’s the only one in a particular area, the bench can get pretty deep with potential suitors waiting in the wings and dooking it out for a place on her dance car. There’ll be concentrations in a particular area where they’ve all gathered, but so far this week that place has been hard to find. I’ve been hunting hard leading up to Bear’s visit to find where these jokers are so I could have a good chance of getting one treed for him to shoot with his bowl. I have a place close to my house that has both ridges and bottoms. Bottoms are covered in tall standing oaks like you find in any place where I grew up in Southeast Arkansas. But on the rocky ridges of this the same property you’ll find acres of quirkers mariytlandica, the scrubby blackjack on most suitable for cross times, fence posts and coon condos. The blackjack oak only grows to around thirty feet over there. I’ve treated a lot of coons there where they wouldn’t be more than twenty feet off the ground, a perfect height for a fellow to make coon kebabs with a self made boat. It was the perfect plant, except the coons ain’t up on them ridges. It’s been dry this winter and there’s zero water up there. All the coons are in the bottoms where all the tall trees on. But with hoping, our hearts and a coon dog on the leash, we made a cast through the ridges, just in the off chance of boar had chased the south up into that short timber. Norp Whaling never cracked his jaw, and he covered it from one end to the other. Eventually he drifted southward toward the creek bottoms, and there he struck a track. He was over five hundred yards away, and we listened to him methodically working out the old coal track, barking every time he caught a good will for what he was tracking, while zig zagging back and forth through the timber. We sat in the canon watching the hunt unfold on the garment screen, but relied more on what I was hearing from how he was barking, rather than concentrate solely on what the electronics were dictating. Finally, we heard a long locate from Whaling and let us know. He decided on a tree, and it took a while for him to work it out, but he sounded confident and we headed to him. He was right on the edge of the bottoms where a big creek snaked its way through the hardwoods, two one hundred and fifty yards south from the short black jack oaks. We were hoping each tree in alas it was not to be. We gathered the cameras and the bows and arrows and lights and little shock for where Whaling was telling all within the earshot that he had a coon tree. Since Barry had called me and asked me about the possibility of him getting a coon with his bow that wailed and treed, I knew the limiting factory we’d be facing was how far the shot was going to be. He’s not shooting a compound. That’d be like using the twenty two, except you more than likely not going to get the air back, and or you will pin the coon to the top of the tree, neither of which being a desired outcome. I had zero doubt the lad could accomplish this feet in the proper terrain, but my hopes were fading fast on this second night a hunting after we treed the first one the night before. On Bear’s second shot, he bounced an arrow off of that coon that was sitting over forty feet in the tree, hitting him right in the bread basket. But the coon was as high as Willy Nelson, and the arrow had lost so much energy by the time it got there. All that coon did was climb a little higher. We made our way to this tree. He had met Wailing at the base of a water roape that had forked near the bottom, with each climbing into the darkness at a twenty five degree angle and stretching way beyond Bear’s bowl range. As I crossed the creek on the sandy shoal, I saw that it was littered with coon tracks. Well, at least I found where the coons had been having out, and I crawled up the opposite bank and gave Whaling a pad on the knocking and got a better look at the coon Bear had first spotted from across the creek. The shot wasn’t much further than the one the night before, but there was a bigger chunk of that coon hanging out of the fork of the tree that he was laid up in. He made him away better target. So Bear across the creek and had to meet a camera and commenced to flinging arrows with no effect into the heavens one by one. I watched him as they arched toward that resting coon, who, like the one in the first part of this episode, must have equated bears marksmanship skills to that of Lieutenant Bence wearing He didn’t look the least bit concerned until I pulled the coon squaler out of my chest pack and started serenading him with the sounds of coon spoiling for a fight. I kept squalling at him, and Whaling doubled up on his BARKX permitted it got loud, y’all. I saw that coon turn upside down in that fork and told Bear John, here he comes. He started easing down the tree at a steady but leisurely pace, on the opposite side from us, And just as just as bar knocked another arrow and started for the other side of the tree, that joker bailed out like a flying squirrel, about thirty feet off the ground. He hit the ground with a thud, and Bear took off. After they both made it to the creek with no airs even close in that direction, I cut Waiting loose to hopefully put his famidy back up a tree, or at least keep him bathe for Bear to get a shot, and that’s what happened. Whaling bade him in a cut bank on the opposite side of the creek. I chunked him my lead and bartide waiting back, and then he ran the air through that coon’s brain bucket, successfully accomplishing his goal, well sort of. He’d requested to shoot a coon to wait in the treat, and technically he’d done that, just not in the way we want it. But could it be done? Most assuredly? Do I know anyone else who’d want to try it? Probably not? Is there anyone else I think could have done it any better? Definitely not. It was fun to watch bar navigate his way through the test he decided himself, and I was glad to offer him all the help I could give, as little as it turned out to be. He’s working hard and a great example to his generation and a breath of fresh air to mine. He likes the woods and challenges himself to do things that may be new to him but considered archaic by others. But that’s how the old things stay alive, live forever, by someone in each generation seeing the value of what has been Now I could just talk him into getting a haircut. Thank y’all so much for listening about mind wailing and bears coon kebab adventure. If you have a chance, please share this country life with other folks you think might enjoy it. And if you’ve really got a lot of time on your hands. Leave us a review on iTunes. The nerds back at the lab tell me it’s the best way to get the word out to like minded folks like this wondrous amalgamation of humans who listen until next week. This is Brent Reeve signing off. Y’all be careful.