00:00:14
Speaker 1: My name is Clay Nukleman.
00:00:16
Speaker 2: This is a production of the Bear Grease podcast called The Bear Grease Render, where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes of the actual Bear Grease podcast, presented by f h F Gear, American Maid, purpose built hunting and fishing gear that’s designed to be as rugged as the place as we explore. So yesterday I was checking my multary app as I’m prone to do in the evenings primetime, and I see a gilly suited figure come across my trail camera and it’s Bear and he he leans in front of the camera with this arrow like this, and there’s a rabbit hanging down from his arrow, and he’s got his self bow. And it was basically like sometimes Bear has a challenge in communicating with his father, especially when he’s in the field. When he’s in the field, I’m constantly like give me updates, like what do you see? Like I need play by play, Like I even say I want to know every blue Jay that you see, you know, like give me the details, And I get like two updates a day, like if he’s a long ways away. So I felt like this was like a picture’s worth a thousand words.
00:01:41
Speaker 3: It was like, what more do you need to know? You needed to see?
00:01:44
Speaker 2: Hey, you know what you So we’re here with Jordan Sellers of Meat Eater, of the new podcast Blood Trails on meat Eater. That’s just done really well. We’re going to talk all about it. But me and Bear have a scenario that the world nothing about that we need some input on them. Bear had a trail camera out on public land over here and left it out maybe a little bit too long during GUNN season, which I would have advised him against doing.
00:02:19
Speaker 1: Somebody stole it.
00:02:20
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and they did not turn the video off really yeah, And I’m a little nervous to share all the details, but I think I can’t see any reason why I wouldn’t. It was a kid, oh like a like.
00:02:40
Speaker 1: Maybe like a twelve year old kid. Yeah, and this I mean it might as well.
00:02:45
Speaker 2: Like I mean it happened in northwest Arkansas on public land, twelve year old kid. Like we have the full video, like, take the camera off the tree and then the thing continues to play, like take video in the truck on the way home, takes it in his house, sets it on a counter case outward and basically we get videos of this.
00:03:14
Speaker 3: Family for.
00:03:17
Speaker 1: Until the camera ran out.
00:03:18
Speaker 3: Of battery, No kidding.
00:03:19
Speaker 2: I called the sheriff the first day, and I wasn’t that worried about the trail camera. I wasn’t even and he was like, well, do you want to press charges on these people? And I was like, well, yeah, no, probably not. I mean, I didn’t want to make a big deal about it. I said, I do want y’all to know that my trail camera that’s in their house taking videos of their families has nothing to do with me.
00:03:42
Speaker 1: They stole my trail camera.
00:03:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, you’re not spying on them for some reason. Yeah.
00:03:47
Speaker 1: And what’s a man to do in that situation? Jordan?
00:03:51
Speaker 3: What would you do?
00:03:52
Speaker 1: What would you have done?
00:03:53
Speaker 2: I tried to shut off the camera, but I couldn’t figure out how to actually shut the camera down anyway.
00:04:00
Speaker 1: What would you do?
00:04:01
Speaker 3: Yeah?
00:04:01
Speaker 4: I mean, that’s obviously, you know, not y’all’s fault at all. And I agree with you. It’s not so much like the camera’s not so important. If I was, you know, that kid’s parent, I would want to know, Hey, this is what your kid’s doing. But also I think a lot of times stuff like that can sometimes be just the tip of the iceberg, right right, And so it’s good to inform law enforcement.
00:04:29
Speaker 3: You don’t want to press charges, you don’t want.
00:04:30
Speaker 4: To get these people in trouble for that specific thing, but you want to say, hey, because maybe maybe someone in that household is being investigated for something else and law enforcement is going to know that, and so that’s going to be something that you know they’re going to want to be in the loop on.
00:04:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think you did the right thing.
00:04:50
Speaker 2: Well, it’s also hard to imagine how the parents couldn’t have been in on it, because this kid went from hunting right into a vehicle that was driven home and he’s got the camera just like bouncing around in the truck.
00:05:07
Speaker 4: And yeah, I mean that’s why I say, I think, you know, maybe the adults in the house, maybe law enforcement will want to know what’s going on here, right.
00:05:15
Speaker 5: So yeah, I could imagine that they’re not seeing the camera the way it’s set up, it’s got to be just like right out in the open.
00:05:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just feel like there’s a real I still am kind of giving them the benefit of the doubt in a way, because I almost I mean, it would be crazy for someone who these people appeared to be. I mean, they had camouflage, they had Hunter’s orange, they had guns, like they kind of knew what they were doing. Yeah, but they were crazy enough to not know that that camera was on and taking video right and didn’t turn it off. So that’s step number one that they don’t really know what’s going on. Yeah, but I mean, would it be possible in twenty twenty five that some kid could have been like, oh, they left their trail camera out here. I guess they’re not coming back for it. Let’s get it.
00:06:05
Speaker 4: Do you did you have your like contact info or anything on the camera.
00:06:11
Speaker 3: I’m not sure we might have, yeah.
00:06:14
Speaker 4: Because in that scenario they knew yeah, right, but maybe I mean yeah, maybe it was more innocent and this is just like you know, they thought it was theirs for the taking.
00:06:24
Speaker 2: Maybe well yeah, yeah, it’s uh, it was a it was a unnerving I mean I was unnerved because I didn’t wanna. I mean, I don’t know, when somebody steals something from you, you feel like, yeah, they should be held accountable.
00:06:44
Speaker 4: Was it what I mean, what did you see when you like it set up on a counter? Is it like the kitchen or.
00:06:51
Speaker 2: I checked that multi app like way too much, you know, throughout the day. And my first clue was I started seeing the cab of a truck, right, and I just thought maybe Baird picked up a camera and moved it and didn’t turn it off, you know. And then I started seeing faces of people I didn’t know, and it was it was taking videos. Yeah, and I didn’t request like ninety percent of the videos. I never like requested the video because on the multi app, you see this like thumbnail and you request the video and then it sends it to you.
00:07:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, and so.
00:07:26
Speaker 1: You know.
00:07:27
Speaker 2: Anyway, so if if if this is you, if you’re out there listening and you’ve taken our trail camera, I will not humiliate you publicly. If you’d like to contact me. Several people said, well, Klay put this video on online, and I was like, there’s no way I’m going to do that.
00:07:46
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I’m not.
00:07:47
Speaker 2: Like out for blood, right, But a lot of people would have maybe in a different scenario than me.
00:07:55
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, I think it makes a big difference that it’s a kid first, it does, that’s.
00:08:00
Speaker 1: A right, videos of parents too, yeah, yeah, or who somebody.
00:08:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don’t know, I don’t know. That’s a tough one.
00:08:09
Speaker 5: I’ve I’ve had a number of things stolen off public land this year, really had a tree stand and then, Uh, the most frustrating one was I had a camera that I’d set out like way back in there all year and I went to go check it and someone had just taken the SD card, which is so disappointing. Yeah, because I wanted to see what was on there. Yeah, have a big buck on there.
00:08:34
Speaker 3: Right.
00:08:34
Speaker 4: Well, they’re like, hey, we can maybe get some intel. Would have been nice to return it, you know, right, look at it.
00:08:40
Speaker 3: Fine. But at least.
00:08:41
Speaker 2: One time, years ago, when I was not using cell cameras and I had I had cameras in bear boxes. They was in bear country, so I wasn’t really trying to lock the cameras from people, but I was trying to keep them from bears chewing them up. Yeah, And so I I left them unlocked but still in a bare box, you know. And I wrote in a sharpie marker on the thing, my name, my cell phone number, and I said call me and I will share these images with you.
00:09:16
Speaker 3: Oh, there you find it. There you go.
00:09:19
Speaker 4: It’s kind of like people who leave their car unlocked, right, it’s like, don’t break my window, just you know, if you want the car, just take it, right, you want the stuff inside, just take it, you know.
00:09:31
Speaker 3: Well idea.
00:09:32
Speaker 2: I felt like it was a reasonable thing that I did, and I never got a single call.
00:09:37
Speaker 1: I mean it was it was so far back.
00:09:39
Speaker 2: The way I justified it in my mind was that if there’s somebody standing right here, I would I want to be their friend, kind of one of those deals like I want to know why you’re back here because this is a dumb place to be, right and uh and but I never never had a call. Maybe I only got one picture in like a seven year span of another person, So somebody walked past that camera would have seen that, but they didn’t. Didn’t mess with a camera. Yeah, so anyway, trail cameras trail cameras.
00:10:15
Speaker 4: Well, speaking of blood trails and trail cameras, the last episode in this season, the detective the Hunter was killed out in the forest in Michigan, and the detective put trail cams looking at the place where the guy died because he thought maybe the person who killed him will come back. Oh and uh, this is kind of a long story, but sure enough, a guy comes back. Multiple days, they get photos of him looking down at the spot where this guy died, and then he also gets independently other tips coming in saying you should look at this guy. Turns out it’s the same guy. I thought that was a smart use of trail cams.
00:11:02
Speaker 2: You know, you think he hid the trail camera though, yeah, he liked it really well, yeah.
00:11:06
Speaker 4: He hit it, so the guy didn’t know there was a camera there. But he’s walking past this, you know, the crime scene, like a week after it happened. Wow, And I was like, that’s a that’s really smart because you’d imagine, you know, if that happened, you’d go back right if whether it was an accident or on purpose, like you kind of have this fascination with that spot.
00:11:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, and.
00:11:28
Speaker 4: Yeah, I won’t give it away, but that guy who they saw on the trail cam ended up he had an alibi.
00:11:35
Speaker 3: And it’s this kind of whole thing.
00:11:36
Speaker 2: But oh wow, yeah, well okay, I have a similar scenario, but not with a human. So in Arkansas a couple of months ago, well October the second, there was a bear that killed a man in Arkansas about two hours from here. Yeah, Game and Fish put up trail cameras at the at the spot and put up a bunch of traps and eight and basically, if a bear came back in that fit the description of the bear that we had pictures of, So that the guy that had been killed took pictures of a bear in his camp and bear Knwkom and I, by kind of happenstance were involved in some way with this. We were there when they found it out.
00:12:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, And.
00:12:25
Speaker 2: So they set up so after that day they took the body and they set up trail cameras, sell cameras, and basically they said, if we get a picture of a bear that does not go into trap, the first chance was to put it in a trap catch it. But it was right during October when all the acrons were falling, and all of us that hunted bear over bait knew that probably the bear was not going to go into trap, and sure enough we were right three days later. So it’s a Thursday afternoon when we went to the scene of where the guy was killed. And then that Sunday afternoon we got a call and I knew guys that had dogs that would tree bear, and so we got a call that they had a camera a bear on camera. This is kind of a follow up because we talked about this on Bear Grease Render, but we didn’t tell the rest of the story, as Paul Harry would say, So we thought the bear that killed this guy is going to come back to where it happened.
00:13:23
Speaker 1: Well, shure it up.
00:13:24
Speaker 2: Three days later, a juvenile male shows up on the camera and gave him fish calls, and they’re like, bam, it’s here, bring the hounds. It didn’t go on a trap, so we zoom over there and uh and basically I was just a part of it, and there were there were two or three local houndsmen turned loose dogs and tree this bear within an hour. I mean, it was just like that easy wow, and they shoot the bear. I get there right after the bear’s been shot. I did talk about this. So we hauled the bear out in the body bag out of this big canaan and they sent it to the crime lab. And every one of us there that night I think would have bet our trucks.
00:14:12
Speaker 1: That it was the bear.
00:14:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, just you know, the only bear that showed back up goes to the crime lab and it’s not the bear.
00:14:24
Speaker 1: The wrong bear.
00:14:25
Speaker 2: Disappointing, So it’s kind of like, well, I don’t know the final don’t call it for me, but your criminal sounds very similar back to the scene. Our criminal never did because one bear in thirty days, they kept trail cameras up and fresh bade out for thirty days at this place called Sam’s Throne where this bear was, where this man was killed. Not a single other bear came in there. That was the only bear that came back. And it was not the bear, and it had a blonde muzzle.
00:15:00
Speaker 5: It was a small male like it looked exactly like the one in the picture.
00:15:04
Speaker 4: No kidding, Yeah it did. And they had a I know, like with I assume they did like DNA testing where they compared the saliven things. Yeah, and they had a high degree of confidence not the right bear.
00:15:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, really high degree of confidence because you know the body of the man had yeah right bear DNA all over it.
00:15:24
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, and.
00:15:27
Speaker 1: So it was a wrong bear.
00:15:29
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:15:30
Speaker 1: Well, man, tell me about blood trails.
00:15:32
Speaker 2: So if if you’re listening to Bear Greece, you’ve probably heard about blood trails before, but.
00:15:39
Speaker 1: Tell me just like the general premise of it.
00:15:41
Speaker 4: Yeah, So it’s a it’s a true crime podcast about hunters and Anglers is kind of the elevator pitch for it.
00:15:49
Speaker 3: So there they’re criminal cases.
00:15:53
Speaker 4: Sometimes a hunter is killed, sometimes the hunter is the perpetrator. There’s a few stories where hunters go missing and it’s not like you know, he he got lost or whatever. There’s suspicious circumstances that surround the missing person. And so this is the first season. It’s almost done as of this recording. There’s eight episodes in this first season, but we’re working on more. So if you like these first eight, there’s gonna be more coming up in the next.
00:16:25
Speaker 2: Year that it’ll be there’ll be seasons with like blongs of episodes.
00:16:29
Speaker 3: Yep.
00:16:30
Speaker 4: Yeah, we’re gonna we’re gonna release them by season. So, you know, I don’t know exactly what the release schedule will look like, but we’re thinking sometime in the spring we’ll release another block of eight to ten and they’re.
00:16:44
Speaker 1: Maybe two of those a year.
00:16:45
Speaker 3: Yep, yep. That’s the hope. That’s the cope.
00:16:47
Speaker 4: And the episodes are usually kind of standalone. Well, I think we’ll do the occasional like two parter where it’s you know, two episodes, but you know, each each episode is a different case.
00:17:00
Speaker 1: Sty hour long.
00:17:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, about an hour long. Some aer are a little more, some a little less.
00:17:03
Speaker 2: But yeah, so did you were you interested in this kind of stuff before because you’re also a writer.
00:17:10
Speaker 1: At Meat Eater.
00:17:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, write a lot of just like hunting, fishing stuff, NEWSS related stuff.
00:17:15
Speaker 3: Yep, yep. Yeah.
00:17:16
Speaker 4: So I’m I’m the managing editor of the website, so I write a lot of the articles on the website. I also help Ryan Callahan write his podcast. Okay, so he’s he does you know, I’m sure everyone knows Cal’s Week in Review.
00:17:30
Speaker 3: It’s a news podcast.
00:17:31
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I’m always sort of in the weeds on the latest news, the latest stories coming out. And a lot of the stories we cover for both the website and for Cal’s podcast are crime stories, and usually there it’s wildlife crime, so it’s poachers things like that. But you know, occasionally they’ll be a hunter who dies and we’ll cover that type of story as well. So, yeah, this is something I’ve been doing for you know, quite a few years now, you know, researching these stories, finding sources, trying to put the pieces together. And Blood Trails really started with this guy wrote in and he said my buddy was killed. He was a Turkey hunter and he was killed out in the woods. They never found out who did it, but I have some ideas on who did it, and that was obviously very interesting. So I call him up and he tells me this wild story of he did his own kind of investigation. He came up with his own suspects, but law enforcement, you know, for whatever reason, they never charged anyone.
00:18:38
Speaker 3: He you know, the person who did it was never found.
00:18:41
Speaker 4: And so I thought, this, this story is good enough, you know, for not just for an article on the website, but for a whole podcast, like a whole episode. And so we put out that podcast back in March of this year as a kind of a pilot episode, and people like that a lot, and so we decided, you know what, let’s there’s plenty of stories out there, right That’s and that’s a question I get is like, how many stories.
00:19:05
Speaker 3: Could there be?
00:19:06
Speaker 1: That was my next question.
00:19:07
Speaker 4: Yeah, criminal stories related to hunters, anglers, and we we we do expand it out a little bit to you know, hikers, campers, people who are using public land in some way. And there’s there’s tons, I mean there’s tons just this yeah, just this last year, and this is another story we’re looking into There are these two kids who were camping out in Arizona on some some public land that were found murdered and it was totally random. They couldn’t figure out who did it. They just arrested a suspect just like a month ago. And so, you know, unfortunately, these stories are are fairly common. And you know, we’re going back to the earliest story from this season is nineteen seventy five, so you know, if if you take that expanse of time, there’s gonna be plenty of stories like this.
00:19:57
Speaker 6: Wow.
00:19:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that really was gonna be by the story is you know, how common is this?
00:20:03
Speaker 3: Yeah?
00:20:04
Speaker 4: I mean it’s it’s you know, unfortunately common enough. And once these first episodes started to come out, we’re getting tons of emails like, hey, you should cover this story, Hey cover that story. Even we’re getting detectives, you know, who say, I have this cold case from the nineties, we haven’t figured out who did it. I’d love to, you know, talk to you so you can kind of spread the word. And a lot of times with those cold cases, people are are more than happy to talk, you know, because they want to get the word out.
00:20:34
Speaker 3: They want to help R and I have I have heard back.
00:20:38
Speaker 4: I can’t really provide a ton of detail right now, but I have heard back from a few of the people involved in episodes that have come out who have said, this is getting people talking where we think we’re making some progress here just because of the you know, getting the word out and and a lot of times, you know, if if law enforcements talking to me, it probably means they’re really what they really need our tips coming in from someone, someone who knows something, and so that’s what they’re relying on. And you know, I hope, I hope some of these episodes can generate some.
00:21:14
Speaker 1: Of ye helps solve the case.
00:21:18
Speaker 4: I would love that because I mean, one of the things that it’s really important to me with with these episodes is I want to talk to the families of the victims, because I want to know about the victim, right. I don’t want the victim to just be like, you know, it’s not just like a puzzle to solve. This is a real person and they have a real family and it impacted them deeply. So I try whenever I can to talk to the families of the victims and so to have, you know, potentially this case be solved. Having spoken with them and then having told me, like how difficult it is, especially for these cold cases, how difficult it is to not know what happened.
00:21:59
Speaker 3: That would just, I mean, be so cool, so cool.
00:22:02
Speaker 2: I guess a lot of these true, like the big like Crime Junkie is one of the biggest podcasts in the world.
00:22:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, am I right?
00:22:08
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it’s. I think I just saw Spotify’s list for this year. I think it was four fourth on Spotify.
00:22:14
Speaker 2: So in that podcast has helped solve a lot of cases, Is that right?
00:22:20
Speaker 3: I think so, yeah, I’ve heard that.
00:22:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know, I guess it would get a lot of people excited.
00:22:29
Speaker 1: It would.
00:22:29
Speaker 2: There’s probably some criminals shaking in their boots.
00:22:35
Speaker 3: Sellers is on the case.
00:22:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you better better watch it, man, you better watch it.
00:22:40
Speaker 4: I don’t know about that, but you know it’s it’s it’s fun to have that potentially that real world, real world impact.
00:22:47
Speaker 2: So, okay, this is this is what I wanted to talk to you about. When you’re when you’re dealing with families. Yeah, like now Bear Grease, we really was just happenstance. We just did our first murder, which kind of overlaps into your lane.
00:23:06
Speaker 1: Lake Pickle was like, Clay, why are you.
00:23:08
Speaker 2: Doing this to Jordan And I was like doing what And I was like, well, it really was just completely happenstance that we did. Uh we did a murder mystery in Bear Greasewitch. Great job by the way, Yeah, thank you, and it just kind of the story just kind of fell on my lap. But I’m I’m more common to us is doing like an outlaw podcast, which involves criminals or potential criminals, maybe guys that were never even caught. And I’m always like tiptoeing around and really conscious of people’s families, like living Like if I’m talking about someone, I’m thinking about their living family, and I feel like that would be pretty sensitive with what you’re doing.
00:23:56
Speaker 1: I don’t know, what, what do you think about? How do you how do you handle that?
00:23:59
Speaker 3: Yeah?
00:23:59
Speaker 4: I mean that’s that’s one of the most difficult things to navigate, right, is Like you want you want the family of a victim to talk to you, in part selfishly because it’s going to make the episode so much more you know, interesting for the audience, right, but you also have to recognize, like you’re asking them to relive what’s probably the worst thing that’s ever happened to them, right, Like I I’ve talked to I talked to a guy who found his father dead in the woods, and you know, I had I had to ask him what was that?
00:24:41
Speaker 3: Like, like, tell me what happened?
00:24:43
Speaker 4: And in doing that, I’m asking him to relive this horrible thing, right that he probably tries not to think about, right, and I’m asking him try to think about it.
00:24:53
Speaker 3: So I never take that for granted.
00:24:56
Speaker 4: They do it usually because they’re they’re wanting the case to be solved, and they recognize that by talking to me, by answering my questions that could help the case be solved. When it gets more difficult from my perspective, is when the case is closed. Because we don’t just cover cold cases on this podcast, some of the cases have been officially closed.
00:25:23
Speaker 3: I would say, there’s there are still questions.
00:25:26
Speaker 4: With each story that we cover, there’s still unanswered questions, but some of the cases have been officially closed, and so the family feels like, you know, I don’t I don’t want to talk about this.
00:25:36
Speaker 3: I want to move on. And you know what.
00:25:39
Speaker 4: I hope is that they’ll still talk to me, because, like I said, I want the victim to be like a fully fleshed out human. And the best person to make that happen is the family, because they’re the ones who can tell me, you know what, what.
00:25:54
Speaker 3: Was this caser?
00:25:55
Speaker 1: I had some people not want to talk to you.
00:25:56
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, oh yeah?
00:25:58
Speaker 1: Does it? Does it shut the story down?
00:26:03
Speaker 3: There was?
00:26:05
Speaker 4: There have been a couple where I’ve wanted to cover and just have hit brick wall after brickwall. Sometimes it’s law enforcement, sometimes it’s families. You know, a lot of times people just don’t respond. They don’t they don’t even say like, I don’t want to talk about this.
00:26:21
Speaker 1: I just just can’t get any traction there.
00:26:23
Speaker 4: There have been a couple where someone has responded and we go back and forth a bit and then they decide, actually, I don’t want to do this, yeah, for for whatever reason. Sometimes it’s do you feel a little bit.
00:26:39
Speaker 2: A little bit like I don’t want to use the word icky, but that’s the way.
00:26:43
Speaker 3: That’s probably the best word.
00:26:45
Speaker 2: When you’re kind of like digging in somebody and they go, hey, no.
00:26:50
Speaker 4: Yeah, because I have before well and and this is this is the reputation that especially true crime podcasts get right where kind of capitalizing on people’s grief. Right, we’re taking advantage of this horrible thing that happened to people, and I’m I’m very sensitive to that, which is why I always want to be as respectful as possible to everyone involved, whether that’s the families of the victims, but also the families of the perpetrators of the people who have done this horrible thing. Their families, as long as they weren’t complicit, their families are are also victims in a sense, yes, And so you know, it’s it’s a tricky thing to navigate. I the after an episode comes out. The thing I don’t read comments, I don’t I don’t do that. But the thing that I’m that worries me the most is that text from the family member they’ve listened to the episode so far, everything’s it’s all been positive. I’ve just gotten this is great, we really appreciate it, thanks so much, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah, but that’s what really that’s what would really bother me, I think is if a family member texted me and said, you messed up. You didn’t, you know, describe this correctly, you made it worse. Anything like that, that would you know, that would really.
00:28:16
Speaker 2: Bother me, man, I completely identify with what you’re saying. I told someone just this last week, well with this Bucky Garrison story. In this case, I was I wasn’t able to contact any of the family on this one. I just it just like every time I went that way, it just kind of got shut down. And it wasn’t by the family, It just I couldn’t find them.
00:28:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, it’s tough, and yeah, but.
00:28:42
Speaker 2: I was very interested in Oklahoma Department Wildlife, like their perspective on it, and so I was kind of like waiting for that text message of like, hey, thanks, you know, so I understand.
00:28:57
Speaker 1: I understand that completely, and I wasn’t going to say the victims.
00:29:03
Speaker 2: It’s really easy to talk about a bad guy. But really, if you understand humans, you understand that a lot of bad guys come from families that aren’t all bad guys, you know. And so you’re kind of bringing up something from the past happened a long time ago, that’s in this family’s rear view mirror. They’re probably trying to get away from it exactly. And that’s one that’s harder. It’s easier to justify doing a story because this person was the bad guy and in a sense, you know, you kind of feel justified and like, well, they should have never done this to begin with, so we can tell this story again. But I have felt like in some of the Outlaw stuff we’ve done, been very conscious of the Outlaws family, yep, you know, just because it’s like they wanted to forget.
00:29:54
Speaker 4: Yeah, their friends or family are going to listen to the podcast, you know, and some of them maybe they don’t they didn’t know, and they’re gonna text them say, hey, I didn’t know. You know, your so and so was a such and such and it’s gonna it’s gonna cause problems.
00:30:07
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:30:08
Speaker 4: Like the the one episode that came out, well it’s coming out this week as of this recording, but it’s it’s about a guy, a hunter in Georgia who was found stabbed eighteen times and they ruled it a suicide and there’s all kinds of reasons for that in the podcast to you can you can listen to that. But his hunting buddy was you know, suspect number one, right, because they traveled somewhere else to hunt. So these two guys were the only two that knew each other. It was kind of in this hard to get to back place. It was dark, it was after dark, and so this this guy’s hunting buddy was suspect number one. And this is one where you know, we went back and forth for a while and he seemed willing to talk about it. But then I think the more he thought about it, he told me he’s just like I. As I’ve been thinking about it, it’s brought back so many horrible memories that I just don’t want to I don’t want to talk about it, you know, I want to put it in my rearview mirror.
00:31:10
Speaker 3: I don’t want to think about it anymore.
00:31:13
Speaker 4: And so that you know that that’s kind of difficult for me as someone who is putting out this story, who you know, people are going to start talking.
00:31:21
Speaker 3: About this guy again.
00:31:23
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don’t want that to blow back on him because he didn’t do it. It’s it’s pretty clear that he didn’t do it, and so you know. But but again, I think there’s a there’s still a public interest in people knowing about these stories. But they’re not without you know, it’s not without some qualms on my part at.
00:31:44
Speaker 2: Times, Barry have any questions for him? You be thinking about it, I’ve got another you be thinking you’re up next, what’s the typical scenario?
00:31:57
Speaker 1: Like?
00:31:58
Speaker 2: Uh, like, if with all that you’ve done, and you know, five years from now, after you’ve done you know, seventy of these, maybe you would have a better sense. But like, what happens with hunters and anglers? Are they are they usually or is there any trend? Are they usually killed by a stranger? Are they usually killed by their buddy? Did they usually die on accident? What’s the trend?
00:32:22
Speaker 3: Well?
00:32:23
Speaker 4: I mean, I think accident is going to be the number one thing. That’s not We’re not really going to cover unless there’s some other kind of circumstance involved. A lot of those though, I will say the we covered a story of a hunter named Aaron Hedges who went hunting with two of his buddies out in Montana, and it appears like that was probably an accident. But I say probably because there’s still some kind of questions. But I would say accident has to be. It’s got to be number one, right, like whether the gun or whatever. I think there are a lot where I don’t know about a lot, but but it seems to come up where it’s an accidental shooting. Right, It’s not a malicious like murder, but the person who pulled the trigger doesn’t runs away, doesn’t come forward, right, So that’s kind of a crime on top of a crime. He doesn’t mean to kill it, like the one the first when you go back in March with the turkey hunter that got shot right at daylight and they just never knew who did it right, right, And that’s what you know, the family thinks, probably an accident. I would imagine that’s law enforcement’s theory that they didn’t talk to me. So I think that’s probably the most common thing. Uh, you know, I think I’m sure there are cases where it’s malicious and it’s a hunting buddy, I think not super often. I think it’s you know a lot of times it’s that accidental shooting that turns into something more because they don’t come forward, they don’t confess, they don’t they run away.
00:34:01
Speaker 2: When was that original it’s the one you ran back in March, the first episode. Yeah, what was the time frame that guy got killed?
00:34:11
Speaker 3: I want to say it was two thousand and four to early two thousand.
00:34:15
Speaker 2: So yeah, very likely the person that shot that guy still love it’s possible, yeah, I mean yeah, assuming that Yeah, yep.
00:34:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, it’s it’s very possible they’re still alive.
00:34:26
Speaker 1: That’s that’s and it’s.
00:34:27
Speaker 4: I you know, I can’t imagine living with that because and that was the other thing is that there is some evidence that the person walked up to the body of the victim. So it’s not like they did it and just didn’t know and have been living their life, you know, not knowing. I can’t imagine knowing that and just living living your life.
00:34:46
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:34:48
Speaker 2: Wow, Yeah, that that’s what’s strange about these some of these stories is to think that the person that did it is still just out there.
00:34:59
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:35:00
Speaker 4: Well, and I mean that was really the big one of the big questions with the Paul Hutchinson case episode two and three of this year.
00:35:11
Speaker 3: A guy.
00:35:14
Speaker 4: He killed a fifteen year old girl up in Montana around the Bosman area. He raped her, he killed her, and then just went on and lived a life in that area. He became a BLM biologist. He had a wife and two kids just living in that same area. And he was eventually found out and right after law enforcement interviewed him the first time, he went and committed suicide, which for a lot of people is like the greatest there was DNA evidence, but the greatest evidence of his guilt is that, right, And so obviously you know this is something he’s lived with for twenty twenty years, right, twenty thirty years, and the moment he’s like there’s any kind of accountability, he’s.
00:36:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, how did you get the video for that? Because in this episode, and I think I texted you when I watched it, I was on like pins and needles. Much of the episode is an actual interview that the police.
00:36:22
Speaker 1: Did with this guy.
00:36:24
Speaker 2: Yep, Yeah, how did you legally get access to that?
00:36:29
Speaker 4: So that was and I have to kind of give credit where credit is due. Forty eight hours covered this story, okay, and they got that video. They had it in that episode, So that’s how I knew like it was available in some way.
00:36:44
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:36:44
Speaker 4: Now, it still took me six months because it required me to submit a request, but then that request had to go before a judge.
00:36:54
Speaker 3: Who then had to approve it. Really mm hmmm.
00:36:57
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that wasn’t even the hard thing to get, but yeah, that had to go before a judge, so I was kind of just in line waiting.
00:37:05
Speaker 3: The clerk who helped me was very nice.
00:37:07
Speaker 4: She always answered my emails because I was constantly like, hey, when is this you know, but yeah, it was just waiting. So so the judge approved it, signed off on it, the clerk, you know, I asked for a few other things alongside with that, put it all together and mailed it to me. I got a flash drive in the mail with the video on it. Yeah, but yeah, that’s actually that’s another kind of big priority for me with with these episodes is getting stuff like that, and we actually have law enforcement interviews for that episode, and then these final three episodes all feature in some way law enforcement interviews that we got through public records requests.
00:37:49
Speaker 2: Public records request so that was evidence that was used in the court of law.
00:37:54
Speaker 3: It would have been if he did true, yeah, he was gone.
00:37:58
Speaker 4: Yeah, but because the case is closed, that we have access to that, so you have to it. Yeah, So that’s one one kind of benefit. It’s kind of like the way I think of it is if it’s an open case, if it’s a cold case, you can a lot of times get like family and friends will talk to you and tell you what happens. Sometimes law enforcement will, but you don’t have access to any of the documents, any videos, any audio recordings because the case is still open, and so you can’t submit a record’s request for a case that’s open because they can’t share it when the case is closed. Family oftentimes, you know, like we said, doesn’t want to talk. But you can get access to all the case file, you know, everything that law enforcement had a lot of times, if you’re patient, you can you can get it.
00:38:43
Speaker 3: Man.
00:38:43
Speaker 1: That’s that’s some strong journalism.
00:38:46
Speaker 3: Well it’s been a learning process. Yeah. Yeah. I didn’t realize how.
00:38:51
Speaker 4: Time consuming it was going to be because you know, a lot of times these public records clerks, it’s like get in line, you know, and you’re in the back of the line, and so you just have to wait. In Park County, Montana, I actually had to open I don’t know if it’s technically a lawsuit, but I had to like pay money to open a case with the court in order to get some incident reports from that Aaron Hedges case. And so you know, it’s just a and the other thing is a different process for each state. Some states are very quick, some states are very slow. So wow, wild, Yeah, it’s been what’s your question? I got two questions. They’re connected.
00:39:35
Speaker 5: How many of the of your you’ve done eight episodes so far, how many of them have been like last ten years.
00:39:43
Speaker 4: Let’s see, I think all of them have been. So there are two that are one from one is from nineteen seventy five and the other is from nineteen seventy seven.
00:39:56
Speaker 3: All of the rest of them.
00:39:58
Speaker 4: Have been within the last ten to twenty years, I would say, Okay, so most of them are more recent. The older ones, those have their own challenges, right, because sometimes people have died who like the investigators, you know, some of the family, and so that can be challenging in and of itself. But yeah, most of them I think are more recent.
00:40:19
Speaker 5: So as you’re like looking, you know, like trying to find cases, have you noticed any sort of like increase in events like this happening and the like recently, Because I know, like around here this summer, two people got killed in like a state park. Yeah, yeah, that’s right, And that was just like unfathomable.
00:40:42
Speaker 3: Yeah to me, that was the story to happen.
00:40:45
Speaker 5: Like whenever that happened, we were actually on our way to the state park. Really yeah, my uncle called me and said turn around and and and there’s been a few other events like that recently that like I don’t know, maybe I’ve just never been paying attention, but it has seemed like stuff like this has been happening more.
00:41:02
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don’t know, and that’s a great question. I don’t know that I’ve noticed a particular like over time increase. But it makes sense that you know, as I guess this depends on where you live in the area of the country you live in, but you know, some areas you’re seeing a lot more people out in the woods, and so it would make sense if there’s more people out there, more opportunities for stuff to happen, and so in that sense, it’s probably somewhat of a numbers game. But like you know, people are people, like people have been doing horrible things to each other for since people have been around, and so I don’t think there would necessarily be an uptick for like any other reason than just more people out there in some areas.
00:41:50
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:41:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean you think about the population of the US is now like three hundred and thirty plus million, yep. And I mean even back in the nineteen eighties, I mean it was like two hundred and fifty million or two hundred and four so I mean like one hundred million, almost one hundred million more people in America since like I was born, And I mean that’s that’s just a lot of a lot of potential conflict. Yeah, so I would it feels like our murder maybe not murder per capita, but there’s more murders than there would have been.
00:42:23
Speaker 3: I would imagine. Yep.
00:42:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think so. I think so, and more people. More people are using, recreating on public lands and doing everything.
00:42:33
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:42:35
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:42:36
Speaker 2: You know, my dad always used to tell me when I was a little kid, hunting by myself or he would drop me off and I would be scared of the dark.
00:42:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he would always be.
00:42:47
Speaker 2: Son, there’s nothing out here to be scared of, which you should be afraid.
00:42:50
Speaker 3: Of as people.
00:42:50
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, I like for a while I kicked around a kind of a tagline for blood Trails that was something along those lines. Yeah, it’s like the people are the most dangerous whatever.
00:43:01
Speaker 3: I don’t know.
00:43:02
Speaker 2: Well, I think I think that’s a realistic idea that most people have when they’re in the woods. Yeah, I mean, most people aren’t afraid of I mean unless you’re in like a hide did and see grizzly area or something. That’s really about the only thing that you should legitimately be really cautious of. I would say almost in all of North America. I mean, other than rattlesnakes and stuff. But people, Yeah, people would be what you would.
00:43:29
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:43:29
Speaker 5: When I’m out in the woods, like you know, camping by myself, it’s usually usually what I’m worried about. Like when I hear something walking out there, I’m usually not too worried about it being like a bear or something. It’s usually the thought that’s running through my mind is like, is that a person?
00:43:47
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:43:50
Speaker 1: Well so bear grease.
00:43:52
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:43:53
Speaker 2: We did, I think our first murder mystery this week on this this story titled Unusual that the Unusual death of Melvin Bucky Garrison, and it was pretty it was interesting, and I kind of told how it happened. But I was in Okema, Oklahoma actually with eating lunch with Evan Felker of the Turnpike Troubadors and his good buddy Andrew Stubbs.
00:44:21
Speaker 1: Who was on the episode in the cold open, and.
00:44:24
Speaker 2: We’re setting around the Shonees Buffet there in Okema, which if he hadn’t been there, you should check it out. Pretty classy place to get the lowdown, and I believe Andrew Stubbs was eating his dessert of peaches and cottage cheese when he said to me, we’re talking about some bear grease outlaw stories. And he was like, now, I heard about an old outlaw over here that killed the game warden.
00:44:51
Speaker 1: That was just what he said. And I was like, what do you mean?
00:44:55
Speaker 2: And he begins to tell me the story that he had heard his whole life about melon Bucky Garrison. And I was intrigued by the story, and immediately that very day contacted the captain of the First Division of Wildlife and Oklahoma, this guy named Hank Jinx, and I said, does the name Bucky Garrison mean anything to you? And he was like, oh yeah, he knew it immediately and had told me, Hey, Clay, I actually was talking about Bucky Garrison, like very recently. And that’s kind of how it all That’s kind of how it all started. And so we set up and this is one of these stories that happened so long ago it was hard to find. It was almost it was difficult to do it because most of the people that were actually involved.
00:45:47
Speaker 3: In it are not around anymore.
00:45:51
Speaker 2: But it was also a unique story for me because a little bit touchy because the suspect, yep is to the court of law, is completely innocent, and so so much of the story was about this guy that they think did it, and that’s kind of tricky too.
00:46:16
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:46:16
Speaker 4: Well, I wanted to ask you, because this is something I think a lot about, is what what was the thought process behind deciding to not say his name in the episode.
00:46:29
Speaker 1: The God’s family still lives right there?
00:46:32
Speaker 3: Yeah?
00:46:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, and it just is hearsay. I mean, like I kept, I kept like searching for concrete evidence that this guy had done it, and there’s just none other than everybody over there says that they heard this guy second hand it basically admit to it.
00:47:03
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, you referenced that kind of towards the end, that he admitted to it.
00:47:08
Speaker 2: Well, but I mean, he I don’t know if he did or not. Right, So you’re Jordan, you’re taking words out of my mouth. I didn’t say he admitted it. I said I was told by people through the grape vine that had believed that he admitted it.
00:47:23
Speaker 1: But I just feel I just have enough.
00:47:25
Speaker 2: Maybe it’s it’s ill faded hope, but I just feel like if he had actually admitted it that he would have they would have got him.
00:47:37
Speaker 1: I mean they you know.
00:47:39
Speaker 4: It depends on the because the one of the episodes in this season is a hunter who went missing and the game Wardens is up in Maine. Uh. The game wardens basically tracked down the two guys who they thought did it, and they just couldn’t quite get enough evidence to put them away. They they basically kidnapped him. He was he shot a deer, They stole his deer, killed him, and then you know, left his body somewhere. And one of the guys allegedly told basically a drinking buddy that he’d done it, and he explained everything, and this guy went to the police. The problem was the police were like, this guy is not a credible person, right, So we could try to put this guy on the stand and say and he could say, yeah, you know, he told me he did it. Here’s what he said. But no, you know, defense is gonna like tear him apart. So they’re like, we need a more credible person. So I don’t know who this guy supposedly told in the Bucky Garrison story, but it could have been just someone who you know, no one would take seriously and that could have been the problem.
00:48:51
Speaker 2: Well, bear you listened to it, what was your general impression?
00:48:56
Speaker 1: Okay, story, what stood out to you it was?
00:48:59
Speaker 3: What was what do you think? Well?
00:49:02
Speaker 1: I think it was pretty.
00:49:06
Speaker 3: Well Okay.
00:49:06
Speaker 5: I think that the number of people that like new both you know, the perpetrator and the and Bucky, I think that speaks a lot to it. Like I feel like there’s a lot of power in just like the human gut, you know, like people just like knowing, knowing if something has happened or not, and like kind of connecting dots that you know, maybe necessarily like yeah, logical. I think there’s a lot of power in that. But it is really hard to say because I also think a lot of times like as as like the group starts to believe it, more and more people start to believe it, yes, and then eventually it just becomes fact. Yeah, And you know, like it’s it’s hard in this situation to really determine and like what side of that the people are on, Like did did the people does everyone who believes it? Do they just believe it because you know, they were told that or do they believe it because they actually knew knew the situation and everything around it, and can kind of put two and two together.
00:50:19
Speaker 6: So it’s it’s I’m kind of conflicted. I really can’t. I can’t. I can’t say I can’t really.
00:50:27
Speaker 2: Well, if you had to today, if you were the decider and you we had to go off what you thought from the amount of information you have, did the suspect do it?
00:50:40
Speaker 3: Or did Bucky de a natural death?
00:50:43
Speaker 5: I don’t think I would say I don’t think that he died a natural death.
00:50:48
Speaker 1: But what was what was the His partner’s name was Bullet, Bullet Burns.
00:50:54
Speaker 3: Great, yeah, great.
00:50:55
Speaker 1: Great name.
00:50:55
Speaker 3: Bullet did it? No? No, no, but Bullet said, it’s a great name.
00:50:58
Speaker 2: By the way, Bullet and Bucky, Ye write me a ticket, guys.
00:51:04
Speaker 1: I mean, I just want to be around y’all for.
00:51:06
Speaker 3: A little while.
00:51:07
Speaker 5: But Bullet his his theory was that like two people did it in a boat?
00:51:12
Speaker 2: Yeah? Was it?
00:51:13
Speaker 1: I couldn’t.
00:51:14
Speaker 5: I wasn’t quite tracking if he thought that the what everyone else the guy that everyone else thought, okay, he did, okay, Okay, Well I would I would, I would have to.
00:51:27
Speaker 1: Say that I would.
00:51:28
Speaker 3: I would probably believe.
00:51:29
Speaker 1: That you believe what Bullet thought.
00:51:31
Speaker 5: Yeah, just because like the waiters being stripped off and the bullet, like the actual bullet one shot and then the shotgun being gone. I mean it’s just like there’s no way, I mean, like, how else could that have happened?
00:51:54
Speaker 3: The waiters thing is very weird. Were they like chest waiters.
00:52:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it just would have been there was no detail. Again, we don’t have the case file. The case file’s gone, but you just assume it would have been a really primitive pair of waiters from the nineteen seventies.
00:52:12
Speaker 3: And then so so bullets.
00:52:13
Speaker 4: Theory was that he was kind of dragged along by a boat yep, and that’s how the waiters got stripped off. Yeah, I mean I was trying to figure out how could that have possibly happened? That’s the I mean, that’s as good a theory as I couldn’t come up with anything.
00:52:30
Speaker 3: So, yeah, I don’t know how else.
00:52:32
Speaker 2: I thought maybe some waterfowl guys might might give gives just like a scenario. And I actually saw one comment today on social media that said he thinks it’s possible that he got water in his waiters and was just trying to take him off.
00:52:52
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, it’s a good like you would you would just.
00:52:54
Speaker 2: Be trying to shed yourself of him. Yep, Hey Dad, how you drowned doing that? And you know water that deep and you’re twenty seven years old and capable and strong. Yeap, It doesn’t make sense. But his whole point was I think he was trying to take.
00:53:10
Speaker 1: His waiters off.
00:53:12
Speaker 2: But it’s still it doesn’t make sense of why you would, Yeah, why you would? Well, what do you I mean, Jordan, what kind of given the same scenario, Yeah, what do you think?
00:53:29
Speaker 4: I I just don’t think there’s enough that I know to know, like these details from how they found him, It’s really hard to come up with a scenario that accounts for all these details, like whether he was killed by someone else or whether it was an accident. It’s harder to come up with a scenario if it was an accident.
00:53:52
Speaker 3: Is there’s the dirt under his nails? How that happen? There’s the why did he shoot one shot from his derringer? Right?
00:54:00
Speaker 4: So it seems to me, and so I definitely agree with Bear that like something happened, probably not an accident, but I don’t know why without any kind of other details.
00:54:11
Speaker 3: Like, I mean, one thing I was.
00:54:12
Speaker 4: Thinking, was I assume they looked at this the suspects alibi, like did you have an alibi? Did you have anyone else who could vouch for his whereabouts? And we just don’t know that.
00:54:23
Speaker 3: Ye, And that’s like a really basic kind of that’s the very first thing you look.
00:54:26
Speaker 4: Another thing I thought was I think you said to get out there. It was like one road basically, So were there other tire marks or was it just so was it used so much that wouldn’t have been an issue or like not something you could figure out. So just stuff like that. There’s so much that I just you know, it’s impossible to say.
00:54:47
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:54:48
Speaker 2: And that’s that’s where this as a as a story was you know, weak in a way because we just didn’t have all the data.
00:54:58
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:55:01
Speaker 2: When I first started getting into the story, and what became most interesting to me was how confident everyone was in the story.
00:55:10
Speaker 3: I mean, ed.
00:55:11
Speaker 2: Rodebush and now I’ve got to he’s a competent man, like had a really good career with the game and fish and it was like a legitimate guy and you know here he came ten years later worked with Bullet Burns for a long period of time, and Bullet would have been first hand, you know, within arm’s reach of this deal, and bullet Burns was completely convinced of who did it and how it happened. And I mean, you get the sense that bullet Burns.
00:55:44
Speaker 3: Was a pretty legit guy.
00:55:46
Speaker 1: So you kind of just have to go, man.
00:55:48
Speaker 2: They going back to what Bear said, there must have been more than what we had, than the evidence that we.
00:55:55
Speaker 4: Have, you would think, Because another thing I thought is like, were there rumors that this guy killed anyone else? That’s another question I had because usually it’s you know, if you do something like that, get away with it, like it’s either not the first time or it’s not the last time. But another thing is is the gentleman you interviewed who was Bullet’s partner, said, I mean he stopped this guy thirty.
00:56:23
Speaker 3: Times over the course of his career.
00:56:24
Speaker 4: Yes, and according to his theory, that’s what Bucky was doing.
00:56:29
Speaker 3: He was stopping him. It was a wildlife enforcement thing.
00:56:33
Speaker 4: So why why would this guy kill a game warden because he was caught poaching when he’d been caught poaching before, he was caught poaching after. It just doesn’t seem like a response that’s like consistent with how he behaved for the rest of his life.
00:56:53
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:56:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, I’ve had the same thought.
00:56:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, like in in and I asked ed about his response to the guy. I said, so, the first time you met this guy, what did you think? And he said I thought His answer was very straightforward. He said, I was looking at his chest six inch circle on his chest and saying I was going to put all six of them right there.
00:57:19
Speaker 1: It was going to be him and not me.
00:57:21
Speaker 2: I don’t think he said that lightly, like he’s not frivolous. And this guy Ed was just, I mean, just like a veteran, well respected officer. I mean I don’t know all the details of his career, but I mean, like, you know, a good guy.
00:57:39
Speaker 1: I don’t think he said that.
00:57:40
Speaker 2: I don’t think he would say that about anybody else in his career that he dealt with. But I also know that if I tell you, Jordan, the guy that’s about to walk in this door is a murderer. I tell you that, whether it’s true or not, that’s going to taint the way that you think about this guy inner act with him, right.
00:58:01
Speaker 4: And I’m going to tell my buddy later on I met this guy, he was acting kind of weird. Right, there were these things about him, the way he looked at me, right, Yeah, And if you hadn’t told me that, I might not have thought that. So that we can influence how we view other people by just being told something about them.
00:58:19
Speaker 3: Who knows whether it’s true.
00:58:21
Speaker 2: And my intent was not to defend this wildlife criminal that we know is a convicted wildlife criminal.
00:58:33
Speaker 1: My goal was not to defend him at all.
00:58:34
Speaker 2: But I kept thinking about how easy it would be to pin something on. And what I thought about was back to my own hometown, Louis Delle and Charlie Edwards. We did a series years ago called Genuine Outlaws about these two guys from my hometown that were notorious.
00:58:54
Speaker 3: Turkey outlaws yep.
00:58:56
Speaker 2: And I just thought, what if there had been a wildlife relates, a game warden murder or a dead game warden in the epicenter of their turf. Right, you could interviewed one hundred people and said who killed that game warden? And they all probably would have blamed those guys for no reason other than they were they had animosity towards the game and fish. But I mean, you know, so, I just I just recognize how easy it would be if there was a murder in the epicenter of a pretty known outlaws.
00:59:33
Speaker 1: Region that you would just be like, well, I bet that guy did it.
00:59:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, that would be easy.
00:59:38
Speaker 4: Well, and like, on the kind of on the other side of that argument, we’ve seen how these kind of serial offenders, these serial poachers kind of end up moving towards you know, crimes against humans, right, Like it indicates something about their you know, whether they’re antisocial, whether they have some kind of you know, mental health issue, whether you know they’re just like I don’t care. Obviously, they don’t care about the law, right And so then if they’re in a position where you know, they can get some advantage by hurting someone else or killing someone else, they’re kind of used to breaking the law, right And this is not like, this is not and this is what I’ve heard from from game wardens, Like, this is not the guy who goes out and like accidentally, you know, shoots a deer on private land or even like knowingly poaches at night one time. This is like this serial wildlife criminal. A lot of times they end up doing worse things, and so you know, it kind of fits that pattern. This guy sounds like he doesn’t care about wildlife laws at all.
01:00:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, that’s established.
01:00:53
Speaker 4: And so you know, maybe he had something going he really cared about out there, you know, in in in the woods, and this game warden was going to mess it up.
01:01:05
Speaker 3: I don’t know, and something happened.
01:01:08
Speaker 1: Would you have told the guy’s name?
01:01:11
Speaker 3: Uh?
01:01:12
Speaker 4: No, I don’t think so, I think And that’s generally been our policy on blood Trails is if they haven’t been accused, like officially accused, we don’t say their real name.
01:01:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, that it, it’s it.
01:01:32
Speaker 4: There was one episode where we got into a potential suspect. There was some evidence though, along with testimony from family. So but but generally speaking, we don’t use the real name. And you know, for the same reasons that we talked about, like the family still around. There’s also you know, legal potential legal issues, right if you defame someone, and you know there are protections First Amendment, like we journalists have protections. But it’s like, do you do you need to get into that potential liability to tell the story? And if the answer is no, we could still tell it without that and we could be faithful to the story. Then it’s kind of like we don’t feel the need to yeah.
01:02:23
Speaker 2: So now okay, but then why did you wonder why I didn’t tell the story tell a guy’s name. I thought maybe you were going to be like, oh, yeah, I would have told the guy’s name.
01:02:31
Speaker 4: No, I just wanted to hear what your rationale was. Yeah, yeah, because because I’ve thought the same thing many times, like we do we say the real name?
01:02:39
Speaker 3: Do we not? And so I just was curious what you’re thinking was.
01:02:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Well I just as I heard the story, I was like, I mean, this guy was never convicted of I mean, they never even tried him. Yeah, they never even brought a conviction against him.
01:02:56
Speaker 3: So it’s just like the guy’s well, the guy’s innocent.
01:02:59
Speaker 4: Yeah, And if you don’t know, like if there’s no reason besides the kind of public rumor, then it’s really like we can’t you know, like defame this guy and potentially harm his family for no reason.
01:03:17
Speaker 3: Basically, well, it was.
01:03:22
Speaker 2: It was I wish I could be in that community and understand, you know, like what all these people know or think or think they know. But because there there’s got to be and then I know there was more back in the day in terms of a criminal case. You know, I think about the shotgun and again not not trying to. I mean, the shotgun could have been mashed down in the mud somehow and they just never found it. I mean they said they drained the lake and took metal detectors out there and stuff. But there’s a lot of big questions. But if the if the gun, the gun ended up being the biggest thing that screamed foul play. Yeah, you know, the missing shotgun that was that was probably the biggest thing.
01:04:17
Speaker 3: Yep.
01:04:18
Speaker 4: Yeah, I wondered if maybe so, why are we so certain he had it in the first place, like, like not just that he took it out with him, but that he had it like in the truck.
01:04:32
Speaker 3: Was it just always in the truck?
01:04:33
Speaker 2: That was Again, this is one of these things that just time has erased the details. But I think if we had that case file, they would have been one hundred percent certain that he had the gun.
01:04:47
Speaker 1: And I think we couldn’t say that because surely they would have.
01:04:54
Speaker 2: Gone to the family and been like, is Bucky shotgun at the house and they’re like, no, he had he always carried it in his truck in the boardens, you know. Hank Jinks was like, yeah, he would have carried it always carried a shotgun.
01:05:07
Speaker 1: They always carried a shotgun.
01:05:09
Speaker 2: So I mean he had a shotgun, as I understand it, I think we could say he had a shotgun before the incident and the family and him and everybody.
01:05:18
Speaker 3: The shotgun was gone after.
01:05:20
Speaker 4: It because that because I did wonder if maybe someone stole it from his truck, like between like as it was just parked out there, if someone came along and they just saw it and they took it from the truck.
01:05:32
Speaker 2: Well, I mean that would have been a major coincidence though, too, youldn’t it.
01:05:37
Speaker 3: You know what? It would have It would have for sure. Yeah. Yeah.
01:05:41
Speaker 4: But again it was like I think someone said this, like, why would he have taken it in there if he was just doing like enforcement stuff. Yeah, right, because like it’s kind of threatening, you know, Yeah, he had his deringer. To me, it was the shot, the shot from the derringer that said foul play more than the shotgun not being there, because that’s like, we know, he pulled that trigger for some reason. Yeah, probably because he was felt threatened for some reason. Yeah, So that to me was the biggest indication, like, yeah, something happened because you wouldn’t just I don’t know, probably not just do it for fun, right, Yeah?
01:06:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, I’m really excited about this next episode. We are we’re going to go into territory that we we’ve never gone into before in Bear Grease, and that we are going to How much detail did I give in the outro of the podcast? Do you remember what I said?
01:06:50
Speaker 3: Uh?
01:06:50
Speaker 5: You said game Warden had used deadly force to avoid getting drowned.
01:06:57
Speaker 2: Oh, I just spilled the whole thing out. Maybe we can take that back.
01:07:02
Speaker 1: I’m kidding now we.
01:07:04
Speaker 2: Uh uh, you didn’t do that, Bear, I did?
01:07:08
Speaker 1: I spilled the hole.
01:07:10
Speaker 5: Okay, Well, I was just thinking that I’m not totally sure you said that or.
01:07:14
Speaker 3: No, I think you’re right. I think I think you’re right.
01:07:16
Speaker 1: I think I did you know what, Jordan?
01:07:18
Speaker 2: When I first started Bear Grease, one of the first real uh feedback that Steve Runella gave me, which was really good, was he said, well, you’re burying the hook too deep, because sometimes I would go to deep long before.
01:07:34
Speaker 1: You kind of gave the hook.
01:07:36
Speaker 2: And so I think I’ve found a happy medium because sometimes you want to just like tease people along, but then sometimes you gotta just like tell them what happened.
01:07:45
Speaker 3: You know what’s funny.
01:07:46
Speaker 4: He he’s given also great advice to me for blood Trails. He’s been he’s been a big part of it. But he gave me the opposite advice. He was like, Jordan, you’re giving away too much. You’re giving away too much too early. Really tease them a little more. Yeah, give them a reason to keep listening. So I guess we just have opposite tendencies there, Yes, And that could be just from you know, doing journalism. You put everything at the top, right, like the first three paragraphs is going to be all the most important information. So that’s just the model that I’ve written in for so long. It was hard to kind of save some you know, keep some things back.
01:08:25
Speaker 1: Yeah.
01:08:25
Speaker 2: That’s funny because yeah, I would have been opposite that.
01:08:29
Speaker 1: If it was up to me.
01:08:30
Speaker 2: On every bear grease, you wouldn’t hear the hook till the very last second, and then you would just be like, oh my gosh, I couldn’t I have been on pins and needles this whole time. But you kind of gotta, you kind of lead them in and then you kind of got to tell them like what’s going on? Yeah, and then so yeah.
01:08:48
Speaker 1: So yeah.
01:08:49
Speaker 2: So this next episode, though, we we interview a game warden who h tells us, tells us the story of having to use deadly force on someone that’s trying to drow him. So that’s all I’ll say. It’s it’s pretty interesting. Wild story, it is, Yeah, it is. It’s a wild story. Well, so after this comes out, there’ll be one more episode of Blood Trails for this year.
01:09:18
Speaker 4: Last episode comes out December eighteenth. Okay, now there’s a chance. Well yeah, last episode comes out December eighteenth. We’ll leave it at that. So okay, yep, yep. Thursdays is when is when they come out every Thursday.
01:09:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they have been coming out every Thursday for like eight weeks.
01:09:37
Speaker 3: Yep. Exactly.
01:09:38
Speaker 1: When you run your seasons, you just run them all together.
01:09:40
Speaker 3: Yeah.
01:09:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like that model for a for a podcast. Yeah, you know, we we five years ago just went with a we’re going to just have an episode every week, you know, and so but I feel like you might that model gives you time to probably make some really quality episodes.
01:10:02
Speaker 3: Yeah.
01:10:02
Speaker 4: I mean I couldn’t because we thought about that too, and it’s just too much of a lift for me to do that, you know, that many episodes over that amount of time because I could work ahead, right, but then I would I wouldn’t be able to keep up, Yes, because it takes so long to you know, like I say, get those public records.
01:10:22
Speaker 3: Sometimes it’s six months. Yeah.
01:10:23
Speaker 4: I was trying to talk with an investigator in Georgia. It took six months for him to get approval from his agency, and then like all the whole process, it just it takes too long. So we do them by seasons because you know, we try to just make sure the quality is there and I’ve at least tried to talk to all the relevant people.
01:10:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep, Well cool man, Well, anything else you need to tell us about Blood Trails.
01:10:54
Speaker 1: There’s a there’s a YouTube version of it.
01:10:56
Speaker 4: There is, Yeah, you can it’s it’s up on YouTube. There’s a video version of the podcast. It’s not quite dateline yet, but we’re we’re we’re working on it, but people seem to really like it, so and like, if you’re curious about what these people look like, that’s a great way to watch it.
01:11:15
Speaker 3: Yeah.
01:11:16
Speaker 4: There’s also, uh, we have a web page for each episode, so at the meat Eater dot com. Uh uh slash Blood Trails there’s a case file for each of the episodes where we post images, you know, links to to listen, uh, and then we have an email so it’s blood Trails at the meat Eater dot com. If you know you have a story you think we should cover, or a tip from a story that we’ve already covered, feel free to to send that in and I read all of it and try to respond to as much as I can.
01:11:47
Speaker 2: Cool man, that’s great. Well, you’re doing a great job with it, you really are. I know it makes a lot of work, and yeah, you’re doing a great job. I look forward to when when Blood Trails solve some crack some case.
01:12:01
Speaker 3: That’ll be cool. Yeah, that would be very cool. That’d be very cool. Yeah.
01:12:04
Speaker 4: No, I just I’ve been blown away by the response. People seem to really like it, and I just appreciate everyone who’s who’s listened to it.
01:12:11
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, so.
01:12:15
Speaker 2: The Meat Eater Live Tour is starting very soon after this episode comes out. I think there’s still tickets available in Birming, Birmingham, Nashville, Memphis, Dallas, and Austin. I think there’s still tickets. The only the only town Jordan that there’s not tickets left is Fadville, Arkansas.
01:12:38
Speaker 3: There you go, come on, you go coming out to see well.
01:12:42
Speaker 1: I mean, well, I’m not I’m not, That’s not what I’m insinuating. Just meat eat. I’m kind of bragging on this.
01:12:51
Speaker 2: They asked me, or I told them a long time ago, it is like, if we do a live tour, you got to come to Fadeville, Arkansas.
01:12:57
Speaker 3: Yeah.
01:12:57
Speaker 2: And so when they were putting this live tour together, one of the higher ups, the big men called me in was like, I think we should come to Fadeville.
01:13:07
Speaker 3: And I was like, you gotta come to Fadeville.
01:13:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And sure enough, in three days the shows sold out.
01:13:13
Speaker 1: Keep thanking the people of Arkansas.
01:13:16
Speaker 3: Good folks that will.
01:13:17
Speaker 2: Come see Brent. You know, Brent’s on a live tour. So and then yeah, Bary’ll be there. It’s kind of a secret. I’m gonna let it out though. Bary’ll be there. And then we’ll have one other secret guest that you’ll be very glad is there. All right, So it’s going Faidville and there there’s there’s secret guests at every location.
01:13:39
Speaker 3: You know, so they’re all going to be fun. Yeah, all gonna be fun. Yeah, for sure, for sure.
01:13:43
Speaker 1: You coming to one in Dallas.
01:13:45
Speaker 3: I’m gonna try. Yeah, I’m gonna try.
01:13:46
Speaker 4: It’s like three days before Christmas, but I’m definitely gonna try to be stuff.
01:13:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it’s a Christmas it’s a Christmas theme.
01:13:53
Speaker 4: Hey, if if you’re off work, you know, come out have some fun. Yeah, and your friends, Like, sounds like a great time.
01:14:02
Speaker 2: I’ve never met anybody that was disappointed. I’m sure there there. It’s possible that someone would have been disappointed that wouldn’t have contacted me.
01:14:12
Speaker 1: Just vibe.
01:14:14
Speaker 2: The vibe that I’ve gotten from every single live event, live turur that I’ve been on has been that just people have a great time, kind of a surprising good time.
01:14:23
Speaker 3: Yeah you know. Yeah, well yeah they do a great job with them.
01:14:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, they’re fun.
01:14:27
Speaker 3: They’re fun.
01:14:28
Speaker 1: So all right, well, thanks Jordan for coming up.
01:14:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks for having me. It’s good to good to out here.
01:14:35
Speaker 2: Everybody can check out Blood Trails now the YouTube channel is it the podcast Meet Eater podcast?
01:14:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, the mutuo.
01:14:43
Speaker 4: You have like a separate YouTube channel for the podcasts, so it’s on there.
01:14:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, that’s right there. Podcasts. Yeah, he just starts that it’ll come up Blood.
01:14:53
Speaker 1: Trail all right, well, keep the wild places wild
01:14:56
Speaker 3: Because that’s where the bears live.
Read the full article here