Ep. 492: Render – Lightning in The Hot Seat

00:00:14
Speaker 1: My name is Clay Nucomb and 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. Brought to you by Takov’s Boots. I’m a cowboy boot man and I’ve been wearing to Covis for years, the most comfortable boot I’ve ever put on. Good boots for good times. Welcome to the bear Grease Render. Today. We’ve got Bear John Newcomb to my left, Josh Landbridge Spilmmaker, and John Lightning Strike Donovan sitting in the Tacova’s hot seat. This is uh did you notice the boots?

00:01:02
Speaker 2: I did?

00:01:03
Speaker 3: I did.

00:01:03
Speaker 4: I saw them a couple of podcasts and saw them. Want to walk down.

00:01:05
Speaker 1: Yes, well, you were in the hot seat last year in your tree stand when you got struck by Lightning. It and we’re gonna people, we’ve heard about this, We’re gonna hear more about it. But because of this, you are going to get some Ta COB’s boots.

00:01:21
Speaker 4: Did you know that I got spoiled by another podcast? I know it everyone, but yeah, that’s awesome.

00:01:28
Speaker 1: What if we had called you in and been like man we were gonna give you some to Covis, but we decided not to.

00:01:36
Speaker 3: We didn’t want them burn up.

00:01:37
Speaker 1: No, no grateful, So you’ll well, we’ll get you some dacos and.

00:01:42
Speaker 3: Once you get your boots and you just swing by.

00:01:44
Speaker 1: Hearing Will Brandon, I would suggest going to like uh like swept Coat or one of the electrical co ops and getting some of their like this big like one inch thick rubber and having them sewn onto the bottom of.

00:01:59
Speaker 3: The have a rubber rubber soul lightning.

00:02:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, they have some work boots. Yeah, and you know, maybe we protect it from lightning.

00:02:07
Speaker 4: And I’ll take anything get.

00:02:10
Speaker 1: Into with our with our buddy the outlaw meteorologes Josh Is, if rubbered sold boots would help you in a lightning strike, I feel like they just did. The lightning would just be too powerful. It just wouldn’t even matter. I feel like it.

00:02:27
Speaker 4: Would some company might find a way to market it and sell it.

00:02:30
Speaker 1: I mean like I think, I mean it can’t hurt. I mean think about like six inch thick souls.

00:02:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, and what if that was your ad campaign, like like to protect yourself from the lightning. We think it couldn’t hurt.

00:02:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, we’re pretty sure it won’t hurt. Well, we’re gonna we’re gonna get into lightning with with John. You may notice, if you’re watching this online that there’s no saddle here. There’s real cult. George out of Wyoming, G three salary made me a custom saddle. A beautiful it really is, and I keep it in here because it’s so pretty. I use it all the time. Though I’ve got a story.

00:03:14
Speaker 2: No boy, So.

00:03:17
Speaker 1: I sold Izzie, my mual, my good meal sold her. She’s been gone for two months. I thought I would miss her, like I thought, I’m gonna sell this mule, and I’m gonna regret it. You know, I’m gonna wake up because I had this idea, Josh that you know, mules are so long lived. I thought, how cool would it be if I was still riding this mule in my sixties, And I had this little dream spasm about that. And then about three months ago I woke up and was like, that’s dumb. I don’t I don’t need to be you know, have this like false loyalty to this animal, even though she will is the first mule that ever trained. This story’s going somewhere, and it has to do with this saddle and why it’s gone, and there’s a there’s a story. So I sold Izzy she was at her peak value, peak age, and I just was like, you know what, I’m not going to be attached to this animal. Soldier been looking for another one. Got Laurie good good Lord Lourie from Evan Felker. Good Lord Lourie is at a trainer Whalen V Line’s being trained for sixty days out in Newton County. I decided to ride slow Trap.

00:04:34
Speaker 3: Are you concerned at all about that browner clues running across that that painting right there, reading right on the bottom corner of that Stick your head down, you can he’s right on the bottom corner of there.

00:04:45
Speaker 1: Wow, let’s just keep him.

00:04:47
Speaker 3: Should I give him a headset?

00:04:49
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, I don’t think it’s a brown recluse. Okay, So I go. I ride slow Trapped the other day, which is Bear’s mule. How old is he? Three three and a half And it’s been a it’s been a little while since we’ve ridden him, and he’s young. And put the saddle on him, and he’s small enough we didn’t really have the tack to fit around him. Real good and I was using my old saddle, and I go riding him, and he just from the beginning is just cantankerous, just not wanting to I mean, it was just like like he hadn’t been ridden in a year, right, But I didn’t really consider it dangerous, just because he’s small and he’s just gentle as a dog. But before I got out of the yard, he crow hopped on me and tried to bolt for about twenty yards. Just I mean, it wasn’t even a If you’d been watching, you wouldn’t even blipped as anything was wrong. But in the saddle, it was kind of like WHOA, what are you doing? Anyway, I keep riding him, and I go up a pretty steep mountain and come back down it, and on the way down a slow trap just explodes into Again, if you’d been watching it, you might have just been like Clay, you just fell off the mule, like there wasn’t He didn’t really buck. I believe the mule really bucked hard. And what happened was is he broke the creeper off the back of the saddle. So we’re coming down in A creeper is a piece of leather that goes around the tail and keeps the saddle from sliding forward. And I’m going downhill. The creeper breaks and the saddle just slides right up to his ears almost, I mean just slides we up on his neck and it scares him and he starts bucking and I go over the top of him, me and the saddle, and when I hit the ground on my shoulder, I’ve got road rashing, a big bruise right here. I turned, I lay in like this and the saddle is on my leg in slow traps right there, and he just a saddle come off it. The girt strap stayed strapped and it came all the way over him, over his legs, over his head. I thought the girt strap broke, yeah, because I’m like, how did the saddle get off? And I flipped it over and the girt strap was perfectly still tied.

00:07:23
Speaker 3: So the saddle just because he’s constricted and what he slid off.

00:07:27
Speaker 1: He had his head down and he was bucking, and that saddle came right over the top of him.

00:07:32
Speaker 3: And that’s ladies and gentlemen, is why I wear a briching. He’s a breching.

00:07:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it was. It was actually your creeper that was on there.

00:07:41
Speaker 3: It’s good.

00:07:42
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:07:42
Speaker 1: I mean, if you’re gonna if you’re gonna get all virtuous about your britching, okay, uh. And it wasn’t your crooper that broke. It was the ring that the crooper hooks to Ah broke off that saddle. So the next set, so I was pretty discouraged, and I probably discouraged Barr a little bit because I was, I’m like, slow traps, he’s he’s in bad shape. I wrote him the next day with cult George’s saddle. Okay, that’s why it’s not here. And I got a good bretching, tightened it up, got everything fit really good, and wrote him yes, and it was he was gentle as a dog. And I worked with him in the round pen and like I mean, he was just huh, flexing and turning and backing up and just all the difference. He’s just young, and we’d laid him off for maybe a month or two.

00:08:36
Speaker 2: He’s needed a little warm up.

00:08:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, And and anyway, that’s my story. That’s why that’s not there. So goodness, gracious, I hope that was worth the first eight minutes of the podcast bear what do you uh? What?

00:08:52
Speaker 5: What’s what’s coming up on the Bear Grease YouTube channel. Well, this week, I uh, I did three hunts with my self bow. The premise was trying to catch breakfast, lunch and dinner using only a self bow. So I went squirrel hunting in the morning, bow fishing midday, and frog shooting in the night. Huh and uh yeah it was actually the I’ll spoil it a little bit.

00:09:22
Speaker 1: The bow fishing.

00:09:25
Speaker 5: My my neighbor Seymour and I shot a really nice gar. We took my canoe down the river, shot a nice gar, cooked it up. But it was a pretty cool video. I think that, Uh, it’s got It’s got a lot of a lot of action. Squirrel miss’ll be out now.

00:09:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, by the time this comes out, that’s out.

00:09:48
Speaker 2: Yep.

00:09:48
Speaker 3: Okay, a lot of squirrel misses, you said. Christy and I have been watching a lot of alone lately. Hmm, there’s a lot of squirrel misses on there too.

00:09:58
Speaker 4: To hit at the New Australia one.

00:10:00
Speaker 3: Well, we haven’t watched that one yet. We’re catching up on some old seasons.

00:10:06
Speaker 4: I got my wife into it. She’s watching that when I’m at work most days alone. Yeah, she’s getting a little baby watching it, getting ready for the outdoors.

00:10:13
Speaker 1: Nice, nice, nice. Okay, so that’s what we got coming up. Yep, good goody.

00:10:20
Speaker 3: Arkansas bear season is right around the corner.

00:10:22
Speaker 1: Bear seasons all over the country right the corner. Bear seasons already going in some places. So have you seen this?

00:10:32
Speaker 3: I haven’t obviously seen the acorn grunner.

00:10:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, but not that pretty wood, Phelps is This is not this is not officially what they’re doing, but it’s actually what they’ve done is put the acorn grunner in new wood every year. So the first year it was in white oak and this is our our inhale exhale dough bleat buck grunt call. And the first year it was in white oak, and uh, I actually liked the white oak the best, other than the wood was unstable and it would it could get loose unless you had a little old ring that they sent you. The second year was o sage orange, and that probably it will be hard to beat this year. This is a paduke. This is a this is a Brazilian Brazilian wood. It’s pretty I thought it was an African wood, Jason said, Uh, he told me it was Brazilian, but uh, but akren grinder Pa, duke will be uh, will be on. But that’s I really do like that deer call. It’s got a doble eat and the buck grunt in the same in the same call. Does that? Uh?

00:11:56
Speaker 5: I do a lot of wood turning with the duke and it has one of the strong smells of any wood that I’ve turned. They gets stronger than sassafras. I’d say, really smells really good. Does that smell?

00:12:09
Speaker 1: No, it just smells like varnish. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:12:15
Speaker 3: Mm So that’s available on Where does someone get one of those? Just Phelps Philips meat eater? Yeah, at the meat eater store.

00:12:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, yep, yep, yep. John have you you’re deer hunter, right sir?

00:12:31
Speaker 4: Yeah, that’s what I pretty much grew up on. My dad got me into hunting as soon as I could legally hunt. I lived in Maryland. I was born in New Jersey, grew up there for about five years, moved to Maryland, eastern shore of Maryland, and there I think it’s only if you could sign your name, so you know, my dad’s hand was on top of mine and I was in the stand as as suit as I could, And yeah, mainly white Tail grew up hunting. I think I shot my first ear when I was six and a half with a gun a dough and then just fell in love with archery. My dadly hunts with a bow and did that from yeah, six until today. It’s been a big part of my life.

00:13:07
Speaker 1: Did you say your dad fell out of a tree stand?

00:13:09
Speaker 4: Yeah? So, uh, that’s the keyword fell. I claim I got shot out of a tree, so I don’t so it’s not doesn’t run in the family, but uh, yeah, so it’s probably early two thousands. I was don’t even remember it. I was a baby, but he was hunting and it was one of those days where he had he was a safety freak as well. But a storm came in the night before and there was a limb right in his prime shooting lane and it was just out of reach, and he made a mistake that he regrets, but he unclipped thinking he just could get it, and the being that he always used to support on also snapped, which he didn’t see, and it just went and he went about thirty thirty one feet out and he just fell and it was I mean, he could It’s a two three four hour story, but the short version is I mean he definitely should not have made it as well. He had the Good Lord looking over him and he had to drag, you know, a quarter mile.

00:14:02
Speaker 1: Out of the woods, and so it broke him up.

00:14:04
Speaker 4: Oh he I mean his foot was backwards, his hand was hanging on by nothing. Basically, he bit his tongue and he was messed up, popped both its hips. What year was this, I’d be lying to the exact year, but it was definitely it was before. It was right around probably two thousand and two thousand and one, because I was born in ninety seven.

00:14:21
Speaker 1: Plus years ago. Yeah, and kid, Yeah.

00:14:24
Speaker 4: My sister remembers it. I remember him like being in a wheelchair after it, but I mean I was maybe three to four years old, so I don’t really remember it, but my sister and older sister remembers it more, and my mom obviously remembers it. But yeah, he was really messed up and he he Yeah, he was on private land and let out like a death cry. And the owner of the property’s daughter, who never takes the bus, ended up taking the bus that day and like got nervous, and then she called his dad, her dad, and he knew, okay, that must have been Matthew and then he she heard she heard this like death cry roar. It was my dad. She got off the bus. So it was like that perfect timing from the bus kid into the house.

00:15:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, kid, hears someone’s scream.

00:15:05
Speaker 4: And then we’re in a small little town where I mean our fire station has like two volunteer EMTs at the time, and one of the old ladies called out sick that day, so one of the firefighters you know, subbed in, and then they ended up going there, got him in the ambulance, brought him to the hospital, and he always remembers h had a like bite down on a belt because they didn’t want to risk losing any blood flow to his leg, and he said he just watched the doctor snap it back into place. But he was really messed up, I mean probably six seven, eight months of rehab.

00:15:36
Speaker 1: And did it impact him beyond that, like after he got Yeah, so he is he still he played major football.

00:15:42
Speaker 4: He was a linebacker for Yukon, so he really Yeah, he already had a beat up body and but he was. It definitely has caused long term effects. He’s had I want to say, two hip replacements, maybe he had one twice. He has eight pins in his ankle, so he’s he definitely got messed up from it, but he’s a tough guy. I mean, he’s got nine lives and he’s he he definitely got lucky there. But yeah, I definitely messed him up for years and years, but he’s it didn’t keep him from out from hunting his buddies. I think it was that next season or even later that season, would have made a groundblind for him and actually wheel him out in the wheelchair and let him sick because he’s he’s obsessed, which I’m glad because it got me into it.

00:16:21
Speaker 1: But yeah, you know I’ve heard that like a high percentage of falls over eighteen feet you die.

00:16:28
Speaker 4: Yeah, No, he got very, very lucky. And because he used to always go really high because he grew up hunting in upstate New York and a lot of it was you know, small little suburban permission pieces, and he used to just love taking a climber, getting real high. But now he doesn’t get too I think he’s actually he just had shoulder surgery, so he’s not climbing a tree this year, but up until I think he’s sixty seven, he’s getting up in a tree. But now he stays right around that.

00:16:53
Speaker 3: He’s a climber. He’s a climber now.

00:16:55
Speaker 4: Now we mostly he’d never got into saddle hunting. Probably when I was a teenager he stopped doing actual climbers and now he just basically does lock ons and with the back in the day where he used to do the screwing pegs, but now he does all the climbing sticks pretty much now and then with some of the permission pieces we have back home, we just use ladder stands typically, but he loves ground blind hunting as well. Kind of depends on the piece of property and what the terrain is.

00:17:20
Speaker 1: M Man. I think probably one of the most dangerous things that we do as hunters is climbing trees.

00:17:28
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I because of his experience, I felt like I had a step above the average hunter because I didn’t see it first hand. I was a baby, but I mean my dad harped on it, not stop. And we were safety built, yeah, were built.

00:17:41
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:17:42
Speaker 4: My mom basically put bubble wrapp on us our first few times going up there, and I always knew those. I forget the name of it. I think they’re called like the safety line where it tethers to the bottom of the ground and you clip in and you’re basically covered the whole way. Yes, but a lot of times even I do it as well. I think I’m young and superman. I’m like, oh, I can get up the ladder without falling. That’s usually when it happens, which is what happened to me. But but yeah, so we always double safety in pretty much, which I’m glad and I’ll continue to do that. But I’ve had I’ve never had a close call slipping or anything, but I could definitely see, you know, hustling up a tree, hustling down a tree, and then a lot of those straps I sometimes cheap out and buying like a cheap ratchet strap, which now I buy the top of the line stuff because I don’t want to risk one of them popping off of the time I’m flowing up.

00:18:27
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, and that’s the wild thing about what happened to you is you had you had a tree stand accident. But I also got struck by lightning. Yeah, I mean it’s a and I’m kind of fixated on just falling out of a tree stand. I’ve I’ve never really fallen out of one. My the most dramatic thing that happened to me, and and it ended up not being dramatic. But I was climbing up a stick ladder, so I’d kept for a couple of years on the same tree, just went in the first time that year, shine my light in the dark up this, you know, just aluminum stick ladder from Walmart, you know, like sixteen feet and it had all the straps on it, and I was like, well, I’ll be fine, and I just start climbing and I get probably ten feet maybe twelve. My feet were probably close to ten feet up, and I grabbed one of the handles and the stick ladder just starts coming backwards and basically one of the top ones came undone, and I just hung onto the ladder and it held on a ratchet strap below my feet. So the ladder just bent and I felt that probably ten feet from the bottom of my feet, but from where I was it felt like, yeah, really high. And I just rode it down to the ground and landed on my feet like Batman and and the ball. You know, the stick bending slowed the fall just a little bit, even though it felt like a free fall. But when I hit it, you know, it scared me real bad, and I got a picture somewhere on my phone with that ladder in the dark bent in half. But it’s I read something this or heard something this week about how the older you get, the more cautious you become. And that may seem like just like a rational thing, just like well, of course, but there’s some psychology behind it. Basically, your your perception of life begins to change the older you get, and you’re more risk averse. And it was actually in relation to flying, they said. They said, sometimes people in the middle Age all of a sudden become fearful of flying, when never before were you afraid of it. And it’s because the older you get, you’ve seen more things, and you naturally become risk averse. And it’s the protection mechanism. As bouncy as you once were, not as resilient.

00:21:03
Speaker 4: That’s true.

00:21:03
Speaker 1: And I feel that because when I send Bear out on a tree stand, I’m like, man, be careful. This is the most dangerous thing, you know, and I would have just scrambled up it. Yeah, no big deal.

00:21:16
Speaker 4: When I first started hunting solo, I got obsessed over this one buck on a new permission piece back home in Jersey and I was working at a lumber company and I saw an old stand that someone probably had ten years before that, and I just grabbed some two by fours and screws. I was just so focused on killing that deer. I didn’t even think about safety. But then my dad saw it before I went up there and goes, no, no, no, we’re not doing that, and we made it a little bit more safe. But I could see with age definitely, now with the baby and being merrily, I definitely don’t take too many chances for wildlife anymore.

00:21:46
Speaker 3: But I think you just understand the fragility of life too. The older you get, let me see that. It’s just the difference between a lot being alive and being unlive is very small.

00:21:57
Speaker 1: It’s a thin, loocid line.

00:22:00
Speaker 4: Yes, that’s the one interesting thing with my story where I tried a Monday morning quarterback. It, you know, weeks later and I was thinking, what could I have done? Could I have done this? I’ve done that, And I really followed all the steps. I you know, I check whether if a hunter didn’t go hunting every time there was a five, ten, fifteen percent chance of a pop up storm, right, we would maybe hunt two or three days a year. So at first I was kind of mad at myself, like could I have prevented it? But then I realized I did do all the steps I told the people in my location. I you know, I practice getting in out of a tree. I use my equipment. So that also made me think that there can just be freak things like a one in six hundred thousand or one in a million chants getting a hit.

00:22:40
Speaker 3: So so you had unclipped just to get in clined.

00:22:44
Speaker 4: Yeah, So it’s I basically just have a rope around the top of the base of the tree where I sit in a ladder stand, and it dangles maybe four feet, and then I’ll do roughly ten feet up. I clip in and then I I’m tethered in and then I sit down and then I’m hunting. But the way the stand is angled, it’s just an old stand. I really didn’t have the ability to put one of those full tether systems, and again it’s ten feet you know, right looking back, maybe I wish I had it, But so yeah, it’s I’m tethered pretty much the whole time I’m actively hunting. I’m in a safety rope with my full harness thing. But it’s just that first ten or so feet getting up, then I clip in and then sit, and it’s that last ten feet getting down.

00:23:27
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, that’s like totally reasonable. Yeah, I think anybody would. Yeah, you know, especially with the ladder stand. I mean I know a lot of pretty safe hunters that wouldn’t even put a belt on them.

00:23:41
Speaker 4: Yeah. I’d be lying if I said I’ve never done. I forgot my harness once and it wasn’t I shouldn’t.

00:23:46
Speaker 1: Got rails around it.

00:23:48
Speaker 4: Yeah, but I was like I can handle it. I you know, pulled my bow rope up. I felt like I had two or three weight or point to contact, yeah, going up and down. So I felt safe. But now I definitely we’ll try to be tiled in as much as I can. Yeah, because especially when I climbed, like when I use my climber on public, I always get paranoid of that bottom falling out. So I sometimes put two extra ropes on that because I know I would be dangling. I don’t know how long I could hold onto that for out there.

00:24:23
Speaker 3: Didn’t you lose the bottom of it?

00:24:24
Speaker 1: I was going to say that probably was as sketchy as anything. Yeah, one time I was using a loggy by You. If you’re if you’re my age or older, you will remember. Loggy by You was like the premium climbing tree stand. They had a metal band with a rubber strap with a rubber overlay that was the back. And one time I climbed up really high in a straight pine tree and got all the way up, I mean twenty plus feet and the bottom fell out and just just ratcheted down the tree all the way to the ground and and I just set I’m sitting there with no platform for just a few minutes, just like, man, what the heck am I going to do? This is before cell phones and stuff. And basically I turned around in the tree and I would wrap my legs around the tree and then just like crunch my ab muscles and just kind of like lean forward and it would drop about four or five inches, you know, you’d kind of take the pressure off. And I made it all the way all the way down and got it and uh and climbed back up the hunted. At one time it fell well, oh that’s the same story. It fell because of ice. There was a half inch of ice on the back side of the tree. Yeah, so bear. Have you ever fallen out of the tree sid? And I told me.

00:25:46
Speaker 5: I’ve not fallen out, but I’ve remember that time the I went leaning red oak, which has a real slick, hard bark on icy morning, so it had ice on siders leaning on and I got up there a little ways and I lost my bottom and it slid down and I had to call you at like six o’clock in the morning to come and bring some climbing sticks.

00:26:09
Speaker 1: Oh, the the ease of this generation to have a cell phone call their dad.

00:26:14
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:26:15
Speaker 5: One time, probably the sketchiest tree stand event that’s happened to me. I was using some of Pop Ball’s climbing sticks and he.

00:26:25
Speaker 1: Just had them all always.

00:26:27
Speaker 5: He just had them all janky and modified holes drilled in him. And I remember I was like climbing a big pine tree, trying to get way up, and I was I was getting real frustrated because the I think the ropes wouldn’t wouldn’t clip in good. It was like those those muddy sticks that you don’t really tie not you like run it through the little clamp and I couldn’t get it. And I get up to like twenty feet and it’s taken me like forty five minutes, and I was getting pretty mad, and I get to like a fork in the tree or a brand or something, and I had to unclip my saddle and I was standing on a stick and I was unclipped, and the stick just slid right out, and I grabbed around the tree and just hung on and tried to and managed to bring my rope back around and clip in and then slid down to the next stick.

00:27:20
Speaker 2: But gosh, yeah, it was pretty.

00:27:22
Speaker 4: I always bring like a little hook just in case, even if I dropped a grunk crawl or something. But the one time I almost lost my bottom platform, I was thinking I could probably at least be able to get it with some sort of latch device or some hook.

00:27:34
Speaker 2: For yeah, that’s a good idea, you know.

00:27:36
Speaker 1: Pap Paul always Gary believer Nukem to bear as paup Paul, he always takes a lot of flak for his gear. On one of our Deer Stories episode, Dustin Craig, my friend Dustin Craig had bought a platform from Dad and went and used it. And the first time he used it, he claims and tells it for true that he set it up the way it was supposed to be set up, but Dad had, you know, rearranged how it attached to the tree, and it failed on him and fell. But he was he was tethered in in a saddle. It was a saddle platform, and so he tells a story and it’s like, you know, my dad had had had sold him this thing that was broken, essentially.

00:28:25
Speaker 3: Given Gary an opportunity to well.

00:28:28
Speaker 1: I talked to Dad about it, and he’s like, Clay, Dustin was using that wrong. He didn’t that that platform is as good as new. He just didn’t know how to set it up. And I said, well, I mean, do you want a chance to redeem yourself. I mean you can come on the podcast and tell everybody that Dustin was wrong. And he was like, no, I don’t. I don’t want to be that way. It’s okay, you know, I don’t want to. I don’t want to be so Dustin. If you’re listening. My dad thinks that it was operator error, which I’m not sure if it was or not. I’d say it could get make me to do a sixty sixty forty that Destin was right, maybe seventy thirty thirty percent chance that it actually was completely.

00:29:13
Speaker 4: You guys are predominantly losing saddles these days, right, you’re climbing.

00:29:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, man, I hadn’t set in the tree stand in a couple of years.

00:29:19
Speaker 4: My buddy Landing’s trying to get me to make the switch, but I just like the climber for now. It’s easy on my back, but I probably will one of these days.

00:29:25
Speaker 5: I like the climber a lot for it. Oh yeah, yeah. It depends on the situation. Like if you’re packing way back, it’s hard to be a saddle.

00:29:35
Speaker 4: I have one of those super lightweight ones that I kind of like, But I think I’ll make the switch here eventually be my next little hobby to get into her.

00:29:42
Speaker 3: Or I’m going to bait. I think I’m I’m just gonna put lock on, stand up and just use it if.

00:29:48
Speaker 4: You have the time. I like doing it.

00:29:50
Speaker 2: Have any of y’all ever found the perfect tree?

00:29:55
Speaker 5: You had a climber, but there’s some limbs sticking out, and see you climb up, and you like latch on your top and stay on the limb and you lift up your bottom and you might jump like three or four limbs to get up.

00:30:07
Speaker 1: It’s a lot of work if you have a Sally, you don’t have to do that. Yeah, true, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I just pretty much exclusively use a saddle anymore. But speaking of lightning, what do you think about this idea, John, if you’ve been struck by lightning, that there’s a greater chance that you’ll be struck again.

00:30:31
Speaker 4: My wife doesn’t like that idea because she’d end up. She got on google stuff about that and she read that that.

00:30:37
Speaker 1: Would this have been the first time she’d heard that was on the podcast?

00:30:41
Speaker 4: No, she she googled it. She probably, Yeah, she looked it up a couple of months after the accident because I used to make some silly jokes about stuff whenever there’s a thunderstorm, or she would text me if I’m out or doing something, She’s like severe thunderstorm warnings, you know, get home soon, or stuff like that. She definitely was a little more nervous than me, but she read that I haven’t really done the research. I do know, probably three months after I got hit, right next to my house got hit because I remember my pro paane tank has some issue with it, and we smelled a weird smell in the house and then the Propaye company said it most likely was and what there was a lightning storm going on. He said, there probably was a close proximity lightning strike to it that caused some issue.

00:31:22
Speaker 1: But you think the lightning was looking for you?

00:31:23
Speaker 4: I think so. Yeah. Now, well, when I was listening to the podcast, I think I made a bad joke. You said someone was hit six times, and I was like, we’ll see if we can beat that. But but no, I don’t. I haven’t really done the research. I haven’t looked at it too much. But what you were saying about how outdoorsmen, obviously, if statistically, if you’re in the outdoors more, you have a better chance. So probably something she’ll worry about a little bit more than me. But for now I’m kind of clear. Yeah, I think I got my one. I don’t really deserve it again.

00:31:56
Speaker 1: I think it’s it’s the perfect this idea that if you get struck by lightning, you’re more likely to get struck again. I think that’s it’s got all the ingredients for a really great wives tale, Because when something happens to somebody, even like our beloved Spence, which he’d probably be listening to this, if you get if something happens to you, you’re all of a sudden hyper aware, and he wasn’t saying that he was joking, right, So he doesn’t I don’t think he actually believes that he has more of a chance. Yeah, he had heard that, and then all of a sudden he becomes aware and he’s like, man, I was out the other day and I felt like it was after me. You know, like you kind of just become hyper aware of it. So anytime lightning it strikes close, you might be like, yeah, I was it was you know, because I’ve been struck before.

00:32:47
Speaker 4: Well, I had buddies and family ask me like do you have like nightmares or when there’s a lightning storm do you kind of shelter in place? And I haven’t had any of those experiences, thankfully, And like I said before, it kind of was just one of the those perfect storms, wrong place, right place, at the right time, whatever. So I try not to think too deep into it because you could probably just overanalyze everything with that, and then you know, anytime, like I said, there’s a twenty percent chance of lightning, not leave your house or not go hunting. But I just keep in God’s hands again and hope for the best. And maybe I took it for many generations, so all my kids and grandkids are safe.

00:33:23
Speaker 3: Yeah. Have you ever talked to anybody else who’s been struck by lightning?

00:33:28
Speaker 4: No, but a kind of connection was my my dad’s client and one of his close friends back home. It wasn’t lightning, but he was on an electrical poll doing some sort of work and got hit with a bunch of vaults. So when me and him were able to talk about it, it kind of was helpful because one of the weird parts right after it happened was I emotionally, I’m not afraid to cry or you know, I don’t care if I cry about stuff, but I couldn’t even get two thirds of the way of the story or even you know, halfway through the story. I would just start, you know, breaking down, and I couldn’t figure it out. I didn’t really talk to anybody about it. And then when I was back home for like a little family reunion, probably two or so months after, he brought it up to me. And then that was super helpful because it kind of made me feel like it was normal and it wasn’t just like a me thing, so no.

00:34:18
Speaker 1: It would be the same thing was happening to him.

00:34:20
Speaker 4: Yeah, he couldn’t tell anybody the story. He would close close family, it would take a while because I mean, you can cry a little bit more in front of family, but like just people, I mean everyone wanted to hear my story and everyone to hear about his thing, and he just could not get a lot of it. Would just get choked up. And the same thing was happened to me. So it was nice hearing that because it kind of made me feel normal. And then hearing a little bit of Spencer’s story made me. Some of the same things that he encountered or experienced I experience, But no, I haven’t been in a room one on one with anybody or really seek to try to find anybody. I doubt there’s any like Reddit, Like.

00:34:52
Speaker 1: It’s pretty interesting when you look at the statistics of one and six hundred thousand Americans will get struck by lightning, Like that kind of checks out. I mean, like the broader you know, Northwest Arkansas area where we live maybe has five hundred thousand people. Yeah, and so you know it kind of seems reasonable, like, yeah, maybe like one two people in this region could be struck by lightning. Well I know two of them now, I wouldn’t have known you probably if if you hadn’t been struck by lightning. I mean that’s kind of how we connected. So it’s a little bit of a observation bias there. But my neighbor got struck by lightning, So it’s like, surely y’all aren’t the only two people.

00:35:35
Speaker 4: Yeah, there’s got to be a handful of here.

00:35:37
Speaker 1: So it feels like that one in six hundred thousand could be low. But I was talking to talking to somebody yesterday about this. They called about the podcast Lake Pickle, and I said, do you know anybody that’s been struck by lightning? And he’s like, nope, he said, I know, I know people that know people, but like in arms reach of him. He didn’t feel like he knew anybody that been struck by lightning. But I can’t think of anybody before y’all that I would have known.

00:36:03
Speaker 2: No, Rumy Warren has been struck by lightning.

00:36:06
Speaker 1: Oh really, Ruy Warren.

00:36:07
Speaker 5: Yeah, But if you think about it, I mean, the people who are getting struck by lightning are the people who we would be around a lot.

00:36:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, just like outdoorsmen.

00:36:17
Speaker 4: Well, I might be off by the dates exactly. I can’t remember if it was right before I know the Everglade one was after, but we talked a little bit about this, the two young men from North Carolina that were killed. I believe it was in Colorado. Oh, I want to say it was a few days leading up to mine. It was early September elf season, yes, And then right after mine, I saw a news article a family member sent It was I don’t exactly remember if they were fishing or anaconda hunt or whatever, or python hunting, but a couple of people in South Florida got hit and killed with a dog. So that all happened the same week, and that’s when my mom was really nervous. Yeah, because you hear, you know, death death, live, death.

00:36:57
Speaker 3: Death.

00:36:58
Speaker 4: But I never even really thought I grew up. I mean I was in Key West, Florida for five years, so there was always pop up lightning storms there. But I never really even thought again back to the one in a million, because I would definitely be out in the water and you know, storm get close, try to get a couple of extra casts in because you know, you think, what are your chances? But but yeah, back to the.

00:37:18
Speaker 3: According to Joshua Wisel, your your chances are pretty high.

00:37:21
Speaker 2: If you’re on the water.

00:37:23
Speaker 3: Okay, the boat, you’re the highest thing on the water.

00:37:27
Speaker 4: But like what you were saying, if you’re around the community of outdoors men, your your chances of hearing somebody. Because when I run into people, either at the gym or someone an ass about my back life or some way it gets brought up, they’re always, you know, wide eyed shocked, like, oh, I’ve never met somebody. But in your in your case what you were saying, with being in outdoors and a lot of hunters, it is probably slightly bitter odds.

00:37:47
Speaker 1: Okay, speaking of being at the gym. At the gym the other day, I made a guy, Mexican guy, and I he asked me what I did, and I just kind of like, it’s hard to describe, but got a podcast. Oh, And he asked me about it, and I was trying to give an example of the kind of stories we did. And I told him, I said, for instance, we’re doing an episode on lightning. And I said, I know a couple of guys that got struck by lightning. And he just his eyes widened and he says to me, he says, my grandfather grew up in old Mexico, rural, rural like Central Mexico, and he said that they’re as tech. There was fragments of their as tech religion that was still pretty prevalent in rural Mexico and that his and they believed that if you were struck by lightning, that you all of a sudden had powers to make it rain for crops and his grandfather. I almost interviewed him. I actually got his number on my phone because I was like, man, I may call you, and I think that kind of he was, hold on, bro, I mean, I’m not wanting to be I’m not wanting to be that good friends with you and we’re in which might have made it a little more awkward. I mean, let’s just be honest about it. But he told me an impassioned story about his grandfather who who And I said, so, your grandfather was struck by lightning and he was like, oh yeah, and in his village he was considered the.

00:39:40
Speaker 3: Rain man, yes, the rain doctor.

00:39:42
Speaker 5: And I was like, do you do you believe that to be true? And he was like, ah, not really, he’s.

00:39:51
Speaker 1: He said, he said. Uh. We talked about it for a long time and I actually had his number almost interviewed him for this episod. But speaking of people that you know that have been struck by lightning, like the one person I told about this podcast before it came out was like, oh, yeah, my grandpa got struck.

00:40:10
Speaker 4: Wow, you know you just yeah, I don’t think grown up or I’ve met a lot of people and I’ve never heard a story or anything, So I guess it’s kind of random.

00:40:20
Speaker 1: But I bet that I wonder if it’s possible if lightning strikes could come in and out of awareness. Like, for instance, the history of lightning strikes in the forties, like four hundred people. Like today twenty five people will get killed in the United States by lightning every year. In the thirties and forties, it was like four hundred people a year. I mean, so like a thousand times more of the people, more than a thousand.

00:40:46
Speaker 2: That’s crazy because now there’s more people.

00:40:50
Speaker 4: But are we out?

00:40:51
Speaker 1: But there were more people on the land, right, there were more people probably actually in the fields doing agriculture.

00:40:58
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think we’re out of the elements a little bit more. We’re more in cities and yeah, sheltered during most storms. Yeah, because I did have a few family members reach out and they’re like, why would you even go out when there was weather like that? But then back to what I said earlier, you would never really be able to go.

00:41:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can’t live in fear. No, Yeah, Baron, I almost got killed the spring.

00:41:19
Speaker 1: But yeah, I got a close call with lightning.

00:41:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe we got to mean it was it was thirty yards forty yards maybe right in front of the truck. Yeah, and we had just been there two minutes before.

00:41:30
Speaker 4: Well, that’s that’s what got me worked up, because right before I got hit there was one because I was contemplating whether I should get down and move, and then there was one right below me in a creek. And that’s when I I’ve never been that close before, except for maybe once on a boat, and that’s when it really got me going. I was like, Okay, this is this is severe, Like I need to get down.

00:41:49
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:41:49
Speaker 3: Even just this morning in my local news feed was a video of Fort Smith, which is just a few miles down here. These two police officers on the side of the road and lightning strikes fifteen feet from jeez.

00:42:00
Speaker 1: Oh really yeah it didn’t it didn’t hurt.

00:42:02
Speaker 3: Them, No, nope. I mean that they’re standing by their cars and it hits the ground.

00:42:07
Speaker 5: Okay, I’ve got a question that I wish we would have asked the weather guy. If you’re on a boat in the water, or even if you’re in the water and lightning strikes a boat on the water, does the like, if you’re in the water, do you get zapped?

00:42:24
Speaker 3: That’s a good question. I think it would. You’d feel it for sure, but it would probably absorb some of the the voltage.

00:42:32
Speaker 5: Like if the lighting bolt struck near your boat, like it know, if you were in the water, and like.

00:42:36
Speaker 3: If you were swimming and it hit a boat and it hit a boat.

00:42:39
Speaker 2: I mean, because if wouldn’t it hit the boat.

00:42:41
Speaker 4: It’s like if you’re swimming around your boat. Eoretically, if you’re swimming around your boat, yeah, and it travels.

00:42:47
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it would probably have to do with just the electrical current probably would go in all directions, and just how far you were away. I mean, if you were ten feet from a lighting bolt to hit the water and you were in the water, I would say that you’re in trouble.

00:43:01
Speaker 3: Why are you considering, like if there’s a thunderstorm jumping in the water.

00:43:05
Speaker 5: No, I was just wondering if like it just dispersed like that, because the other day it was I’ve been in a handful of pretty good lightning storms where it’s been striking all around me. But the other day we’re bowfishing and we just had a troller motor. We’re on the other side of the lake, and a storm came up real quick and it was struck and we were like, right in a monst it was striking all around us, and I was like, what are we gonna do, because I mean, the boat only goes like two miles an hour with that troller motor, and so we quit shooting that fish. I told I told the guys that I was with, I was like, we just need to get back to the boat ramp.

00:43:44
Speaker 1: This is not a good situation.

00:43:46
Speaker 5: But I was wondering, like if it if it would strike, if it hit the water like two hundred yards away from us, would it hit us in the boat?

00:43:55
Speaker 3: Probably not, probably not that far.

00:43:58
Speaker 2: But now it sounds like it hit just go straight for the boat.

00:44:02
Speaker 3: It’s I think it’s I think it’s not a for certain that it’s going to hit the boat, but it definitely has a higher likelihood of being hit if it’s higher than the water, but it is good.

00:44:13
Speaker 4: Kind of thinking what to do because, like you said, I think in one of your experiences you laid flat and that’s actually not the proper thing to do, which I kind of think anytime I’m in a situation where get low and get you know, down, But I guess, yeah, I guess standing would be the best place. I think made from high trees.

00:44:29
Speaker 3: Out and open and there’s a lightning storm, I think the only thing you can do is put your head between your legs and kiss your butt goodbye because you’re gone.

00:44:36
Speaker 1: Well, but the I think the most practical, the most practical info on the podcast for like what do you do in a lightning storm is just move as quickly as possible. Yeah, it’s a shelter, and maybe that shelter is your car, yep, And you definitely would be better in a vehicle than just standing out.

00:44:56
Speaker 4: I was trying to get to this little rock, uh, not really a cave, but just little ledge that you could kind of because I was also being a baby about the rain. Was like I didn’t want to get soaked and sit for another six hours, so I was going to try to get there. So that was my plan. I don’t know if it.

00:45:08
Speaker 3: Which seems like it would be better.

00:45:10
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, because I would have been kind of I would have been out of the elements only by a few feet with a basically it’s a little shelf over me. But I just thought that was like a smart thing to do, just hunk her down because I saw that the storm wasn’t going to be this two or three hour storm. I knew it was just going to roll in, roll out.

00:45:25
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:45:26
Speaker 4: Because you were saying you were hunting the same day, Yes.

00:45:28
Speaker 1: We were, and uh, our storm came through at a different time. Okay, it was later because it was like the last hour of dark daylight.

00:45:37
Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:45:38
Speaker 1: Then it kind of it messed up our hunt because we got down early. Yeah, we got down early on that day.

00:45:43
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:45:43
Speaker 5: I remember that storm because there were acorns. The trees were full of acorns, and whenever the gust front came through, it sounded like it was hail.

00:45:50
Speaker 3: At Bear Camp. Yeah, and it hailed like crazy over there for twenty minutes. You know, little pee to dime signs, dim size is.

00:46:00
Speaker 1: Halo lightning wild. I thought it was interesting the statistics about lightning that more people get struck in Florida. Like, that’s for sure, more people die, more people get struck in Florida. But there’s more lightning strikes per square mile per year in Oklahoma.

00:46:28
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, I didn’t know that about Oklahoma. Always knew Florida was like the lightning capital.

00:46:33
Speaker 1: Well, but my interpretation of those statistics tells me that really Oklahoma’s probably the lightning capital. More people just get killed in Florida because it’s flat, a lot of agriculture, a lot of I assume, just a lot of people out doing stuff and boats and and it’s it is really flat.

00:46:51
Speaker 3: I wonder how many of those people in Florida are on the water. I bet there’s more people on the water.

00:46:57
Speaker 2: You know.

00:46:57
Speaker 1: There’s a lot of agg in Florida.

00:46:58
Speaker 4: Though.

00:46:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was thinking about watermelon, big watermelon patches and different workers out in fields and uh but yeah, it could be water related activities too, I bet it is.

00:47:15
Speaker 3: But I thought it was interesting that ninety percent of the people who get struck lift. I wouldn’t have expected.

00:47:20
Speaker 4: That, Yeah, I didn’t. I always thought it was you you’re a gone, or if you get hit.

00:47:24
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that that was interesting. That was interesting.

00:47:30
Speaker 3: I think it was interesting when when Spence was talking about when he got hit and when he kind of roused up that all his chickens were dead around him. I mean, that’s got to be a rude awakening, you know what. I mean to see that.

00:47:44
Speaker 4: What year was that that he got hit?

00:47:46
Speaker 3: That was just this spring? Last spring?

00:47:47
Speaker 2: Yeah?

00:47:48
Speaker 4: Wow?

00:47:48
Speaker 3: Yeah a year ago.

00:47:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, a year ago, like February spring before you got struck. Yeah, yeah, it was a.

00:47:58
Speaker 3: That was a crazy day. I went to see him in the hospital after he got into the emergency room, and I mean, to all outward appearances, he was more or less fine. His feet were burned, you know what I mean, But he was joking, and you know, I think he went home. A couple hours later. Zach and Jessica were there, and Christy and I stopped to see him.

00:48:20
Speaker 4: And the same thing happened to me pretty much. Once I felt safe and I got all my fluids backs in and back in and all the tests came back normal, I was, you know, kind of my jolly self, just a little. My speech was like a little slow.

00:48:40
Speaker 3: So that’s been almost a year ago. Yeah, when do you feel like you’re one hundred percent now?

00:48:44
Speaker 4: Yeah, I definitely got humbled with trying to get back into like working out and training, because I just felt like I didn’t do anything for multiple months. I just felt really weak in the gym and even just like normal walking was like a little bit more of a chore for me. But overall, like actual like heard issues, many brain issues, nothing nothing major, just some minor. I definitely bruised my ribs because I kind of landed like this messed up my wrists, but no breaks. My wrist was sore for probably two or three months. My ribs were bruised for about a month.

00:49:19
Speaker 3: My eye was Yeah, John showed me the picture of that weld on his head. It’s unbelievable, it was.

00:49:25
Speaker 4: And that’s what Yeah, because part of the story is when I finally got to the hospital, my wife still didn’t know what happened. She was kind of putting the pieces together, but she saw the head and that’s when she tried to compose herself because she didn’t want to freak.

00:49:38
Speaker 1: That came from an impact.

00:49:39
Speaker 4: I had a rock. No, yeah, I hit a rock when I landed, And that’s what really made her realize, Okay, this isn’t just like a small fall like because it looked really bad. I mean it was probably a baseball size coming out and it was black and blue, and then all the swelling went into my eye the next day, so she that’s it was definitely a hard fall right onto, like a little rock in the ground.

00:50:05
Speaker 2: Were you were you in pain whenever you were crawling out of there or was it was adrenaline?

00:50:10
Speaker 4: Adrenalinever and it uh definitely took over my body. Initially it was the breathing and like the shock and like the ringing and the white. I wouldn’t necessarily classify as pain, but I knew something happened wasn’t a normal body feeling because there was a split second where I just thought I fell and I was like finally catch my breath, like maybe I could get back in the tree and ride this out. But then that’s when my my hat was all messed up. I didn’t know about the head yet and I just nicked my head and that just that was like the first time I felt real pain from it, and I started getting nervous and I thought, okay, I got to get in the woods. But then going up getting back to my truck is when my body just started feeling like I was like almost like losing control. And it wasn’t like a pain, but it was just weakness, tingling, like I lost the feeling on my left leg, my left hand. I couldn’t even grip my bag or bow, and then my vision was just starting to blur out. And that’s when it wasn’t that was the electrical See, it was either that or I hit my head here. So it either had to do with the hitting of the rock or be cause if I I tried to figure out where, I don’t think my body got hit. I think it hit tree, absorbed, went through the tree, went through the stand, and then through my body, and that’s what threw me. I mean, I’m not a tiny guy. It was. I mean I landed from here to bear a little bit further away, so if I just was to fall, I probably would have fallen back. But I got shot or propelled out. And the way I landed was like this. But my arms here were bruised. And my sister was at Piace school at the time, and the way she figures it out is from my muscles being clenched, and that’s the lightning went through my arms and that’s what caused the bruis. Because I didn’t land and like this, So I don’t know why this arm was a bruised Yeah, because I was tensed up the second it hit me. That’s what she kind of thinks happened. That’s why there was mild bruising on my arms because I didn’t land like this. If anything, I would have just been bruising on my side.

00:52:13
Speaker 1: So you were holding on to the stand like, yeah, I was getting it. Probably can’t would it come?

00:52:17
Speaker 4: Yeah, right through the stand through like my arms and chest. But pain back to the pain really nothing until I knew I definitely didn’t feel good, but the adrenaline was definitely taken over. I kind of was just out of it, and I was just so focused on you know, getting back up and moving and getting to my truck and eventually getting the help that I really probably didn’t even try to focus on the pain. The pain definitely the night I got home, and then for weeks later it was just I mean it felt like I was back playing football again, just bruising and you know, couldn’t even if someone tried to hug me. I was like no, no, no, because it was just everything was sore, like my full body. But and then the head just kind of normal. The brute, like the the Welt size went down right away. But I mean it looked like it was actually embarrassing going out in public because if you see someone with the bruise eye black eye, you kind of think they got a fight. But I got in a fight with lightnings, like I kind of one didn’t win, maybe a draw, but but yeah, it wasn’t. The pain was definitely days and weeks after, just like your normal body soreness and then the wrists. I couldn’t really do a lot with it, but no major like luckily, because if I if I fell and wasn’t out, I probably would have. I mean definitely at that height, in my size, I felt like I would have shattered, you know, an ankle like my dad did, or shattered my wrists or something.

00:53:35
Speaker 1: So I don’t know, kind of just fell limp literally fell out.

00:53:39
Speaker 4: Yeah, it just got wow, propelled out because naturally you you would try to brace your fall even though.

00:53:45
Speaker 1: You didn’t perceive, like just like a clap of thunder and a lightning bolt, it was kind of just like you just like it slacked out.

00:53:52
Speaker 4: It was, yeah, it was second So I just remembered like time when you’re going through those things. It’s it’s hard to go back and remember exactly. But I saw I shot a couple of text messages in my buddy like hey, what do you think and checked the cell. And then when that lightning and loud thunder was two three hundred yards below me, that’s when I was like, okay, instant just kind of got into survival mode. I was like, okay, let me get down, grab my bow low or have my bow still in the stand. Actually left my bow because my bow got shot out.

00:54:27
Speaker 1: Had my bag bow wasn’t in your hand?

00:54:30
Speaker 4: No, my bow got shot because when I would climb.

00:54:32
Speaker 1: So you weren’t holding your bow and.

00:54:34
Speaker 4: No, no, no, my bow was on one of those one of those little uh you know room.

00:54:40
Speaker 1: Shot off the tree.

00:54:41
Speaker 4: Yeah, my bow. I’m I’m trying to recreate either trying to recreate the room, but like where where your two hides are. There is where the tree and I landed here and then and then there’s like a trail and then the bow was basically where your computer is. So that’s when I was because at first I thought, I and that’s where I’m trying to like gather and you know, piece together what.

00:55:03
Speaker 1: Happened, like if that bow was on the hook, Yeah.

00:55:06
Speaker 4: Because I was. I was contemplating, which again back to safety, which wouldn’t have been safe. I was contemplating climbing because I didn’t have time to get my bow rope out, you know, carefully put my matthews in lower it down. So I was like, let me just leave it. But I did consider grabbing it and then kind of going down with one hand, but I didn’t think that was safe. But no, I just had my bag was already at the base of my tree, and I just went started going down. And then yeah, when I woke up, the bow and then my arrow was my I should I kind of play around with the arrows, but I was using a beast broadhead and that actually opened up it was on the ground, but yeah, it was. Yeah, my bow was probably ten or so feet from the tree.

00:55:47
Speaker 1: M was the tree messed up at all?

00:55:49
Speaker 4: No, And that’s another unique thing. Maybe a little bit at the tippy top. It’s a kind of a dense canopy right at the edge of this little opening. And then the stand was slightly shifted. I don’t know if that was my body pulling it or I think it was more so my body pulling it, possibly from holding on. I don’t know if the lightning pushed it, but didn’t look. I’ve seen a couple of trees that have been hit where there’s kind of like a you know, damage to the bark, but there was no true damage. I’ve only been back to the area twice, so I’m going to do it better. You know.

00:56:21
Speaker 1: What was congruent with both of the stories we heard is Spence really didn’t know what happened to him either. He just just like all of a sudden, it was just blacked out. And it kind of makes sense, And we talked about it on the episode about how, I mean, lightning is traveling faster and sound, so it’s going to strike you before you hear it. Now the flash you would see because the speed of light would be fast as fast as you know, I mean, so like perception of light seems like it could be something that you would see. But yeah, like he just is like just like out on the ground, like trying to figure out what happened.

00:57:02
Speaker 4: Yeah, because I was just I was I was actually mad at myself for a second. I was like, how did I fall? Cause again, you know, three points of contact and I was like, there’s no way I fell, and I was almost like mad. I was like, how the heck did this happen? And then I just started putting two and two together. Yeah, because again back to falling, you typically would fall either straight back like in a cartoon, or to the side. But I was definitely more than a body’s length over, so it was definitely projected out, and the way and the angle of it. It wasn’t just a natural climbing ladder. It was I got shot this way in a sense.

00:57:33
Speaker 3: Do you think you were out for? How long?

00:57:37
Speaker 4: I would say north of a minute max? Two minutes? Okay, yeah, yeah, because I’m glad, Like I was kind of trying to remember time, not for the podcast in a year, but kind of just for like safety wise, like how long was I out? And it was roughly like three fifteen, three thirty when I realized I got hit, and then I got back to the truck right before right after four, and then made it to the hospital right around four thirty, So it was yeah, I definitely wasn’t out for you know, twenty minutes, ten minutes, but it was enough to enough. Yeah, it was at least two minutes.

00:58:15
Speaker 1: Okay, how big. Was this bear you were after?

00:58:17
Speaker 4: Pretty big? I would say, if it’s not, it’s north of three point fifty, probably right.

00:58:25
Speaker 1: Around that three coming in pretty regular.

00:58:27
Speaker 4: He was on a rope. I was just telling bear before we started. I mean, I could basically tell you, like, hey, I’m going to get a multie notification within the next five minutes, and then I’d show you my phone. It would pop up. But then so the opener was seventeenth. I got hit the eighteenth, so it was probably the fifteenth.

00:58:42
Speaker 1: Have you got a picture of it?

00:58:44
Speaker 4: Yeah, you could show me. Yeah, I left my phone over there.

00:58:46
Speaker 1: But I’m actually thinking about starting a new business that I’d like to share with y’all. It has to do with this. The most asked question that I get on any social media platform is people sending me their bear pictures asking me how much they would actually and I’m just going to start like a cameo business where you pay me like five ninety nine for like a thirty second assessment of your animal. Great, I mean, and I would just look at it and just make a little video and just be like, man, that’s a good looking bear. You know, it’s hard to tell without a structure in This is what I would say ninety percent of the time. It’s pretty hard to tell with one photo the size of this bear, especially if there’s no barrel or anything. But I would say that bear is between two hundred and two thirty. Yeah, thanks man. It would go into my account with a tip option, with a tip option, and I’d bump up a little bit from what I actually thought. Really it was one eighty, but I said two hundred and two thirty a little bit. Yeah, I hype them up a little bit. Y’all think that would work absolutely?

00:59:55
Speaker 4: Yeah, Well, the bear I grew up being around in New Jersey or typically bigger than the average Arkansas bear I’ve seen so far. You also can’t hunt directly over bait. You got to be I think, three hundred feet from bear from the bait pile in Jersey. So I’ve never I didn’t grow up doing any of the barrel hunting where you know, you put the feet in. But that’s a good way to kind of try to figure out the size of it. But he’s big, because I’ve seen a few other ones that are probably one hundred and fifty a little less than two hundred pounds, but he’s he’s got that big belly that drags, and he’s got a pretty good size head. Because I think up in Jersey someone taught us like the smaller the ears, the bigger the bear. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard that, because it’s a bigger head. But there’s some real big ones up there. So when we used to see the bears there were killing a five hundred pound bear wasn’t a crazy deal up in Jersey.

01:00:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are big bears up there for sure.

01:00:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, speaking of Moultree, did you have any pictures of you falling that the tree?

01:00:50
Speaker 4: Now? I thought about that after or my buddy asked me. My one friend was like, I wish you had like a go pro strap to you the whole thing, Yeah, because that would have been a cool clip. But now the way the angle was, yeah, I never really have gotten into filming or anything, but I kind of just have the one angle right towards the bait barrels and I was kind of parallel with it behind it kind of. But no, that would have been nice.

01:01:12
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm mm hmm hmm. Well pretty interesting, Bart. What’s one thing did you learn anything about lightning? Just from Josh the Outlaw meteorologists.

01:01:24
Speaker 2: I mean yeah, I mean I did not.

01:01:27
Speaker 5: I would have thought if you had a metal, if you had if you’re carrying around a gun, you’d have a better chance of getting struck.

01:01:34
Speaker 4: So that was the other reason why I left my bow. I was thinking the same thing. Oh, I just remembered that. I was like, let me not have something in my hand. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I haven’t thought about that this whole time, but that just clicked.

01:01:45
Speaker 1: Yeah I would.

01:01:45
Speaker 2: I would have thought if you it’s a metal it would have got you.

01:01:49
Speaker 1: But I’m gonna go me and me and Josh the outlaw meteorologist. Next time there’s a lightning storm, I’m gonna say, hey, go stand out there with this metal rod.

01:01:58
Speaker 4: Yeah, if you’re.

01:01:59
Speaker 1: So confident in this, I still have not sold on that. I believe it’s true.

01:02:03
Speaker 4: I’ve torn on it.

01:02:05
Speaker 1: I’m not walking across the field.

01:02:06
Speaker 4: But you always hear things about golf courses because you always have a club, so you always hear about I think there’s a caddyshack, maybe there’s a funny clip where the guy gets hit. He has like the best round of his life and gets hit on the eighteenth hole or something. But I always I always connect things to like, Okay, don’t be near metal, don’t have a metal pole, don’t have affiicient what did you think, like fishing rod, bow and arrow a golf club? Yeah, now, I mean I didn’t.

01:02:29
Speaker 1: It also makes sense for that to be a great wives tale that people like, where are golfers. They’re out in the open, exactly out in the elements, and so like the golfer getting struck and he might have a club in his hand, but maybe it has nothing to do with the club, but to us because metal is a conductor of electricity and we know that that, it just makes sense, Well, he got struck because he had a golf club. Yeah yeah. And I thought about my Turkey story of being in a lightning storm with a gun, and my instinct was get rid of the gun through the gun.

01:03:02
Speaker 4: You know, I don’t think my tree got hit because of the stand, because I was also thinking like, oh, well, there was two barrels twenty feet away, there was the stand, But I just think it was it’s probably if it’s not the biggest tree, it’s the second biggest tree in the area, So maybe that had to do with it. But at first I was thinking, I was like Oh, it’s because of the stand was attached to the tree that brought it there. But I don’t I don’t have any actual evidence to that.

01:03:26
Speaker 2: Yeah.

01:03:27
Speaker 1: So okay, so that’s what you learned where Yeah, and.

01:03:29
Speaker 5: Then and then that it’s likely to hit the highest, the high object, which makes sense, and that it makes me not want to go get under a tree.

01:03:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, cause, and that’s why the hot tip for lightning is just whatever it takes, just get into shelter. Yeah, Like if you’re yeah, I would have thought, if you’re a mile away from your your cabin, well, let’s say half a mile, half mile from the cabin, lightning storm comes, I would go shelter under a tree in the woods.

01:04:06
Speaker 4: I would have done the same thing too.

01:04:07
Speaker 1: But I think the answer is forget that. Just keep moving, keep moving, even if you’re walking through the middle of the storm.

01:04:14
Speaker 4: Yeah, because I can’t remember did Spence say he definitely knows it hit the henhouse or he assumed either.

01:04:21
Speaker 1: Killed the chickens in the henhouse?

01:04:23
Speaker 4: Okay, and I would he would then.

01:04:25
Speaker 1: Right by this hoop house that is at least ten feet tall or eight feet tall, So yeah, yeah, okay, so that’s what you learn. Yeah, Josh, what did you learn? Did you learn anything from Josh?

01:04:41
Speaker 3: I think it was the the U not sheltering under things like like a tree or something. I because that’s always what I would have done. And yeah, just I mean it’s so random. I mean you can’t can’t really predict it.

01:04:56
Speaker 4: And that’s why again, like back to the question you asked me that wasn’t in the podcast about like are you doing any measures? You know, are you afraid? Are you gonna go hunting again? You’re gonna hang it up. That’s why I keep going back to that story because I I in my mind, I did everything right, per se. I wasn’t you know, so crazy after this bear that I drove into the storm knowing it might happen, and I really like precaution wise, maybe what I’ll do now is I might get an extra set or like a garment, so another way to have communication. Yeah, and maybe send out a couple more pins to people. But I’m not going to like completely let it change the way I hunt or you know, think about going outside whenever there’s a storm.

01:05:37
Speaker 1: You know, the these guys that are getting struck out West, that’s tough, Like if you’re on a backcountry hunt. Yeah, and you’re on top of some mountain and a pop up storm comes up.

01:05:50
Speaker 4: Well, those guys from Colorado, that’s basically what happened. That when they first found their bodies, they didn’t even connect the dots to lightning. They thought it was hypothermia. Yeah, and then later I think of the doctors just saw a slight little sign that it was lightning, and then they connected all the dots and realized it.

01:06:04
Speaker 1: Well, tell me what you said, Josh about climbing the peaks out in Colorado.

01:06:08
Speaker 3: H When we went to go do a Pike’s Peak once, and they tell you if you’re doing a mountain like there’s lots of fourteen thousand foot mountains that you can climb in Colorado. They tell you that almost every day there’s a pop up thunderstorm after noon. And so they tell you if you’re gonna summit, once you get above twelve thousand feet, there’s no trees because of the airs thin, so that last two thousand feet you’re gonna be climbing, you’re gonna be out and open, And so they tell you if you’re gonna summit, you need to summit in enough time to get back down below the tree line by noon.

01:06:45
Speaker 1: Okay. Interesting. Yeah.

01:06:48
Speaker 5: One time, David your son, and we were in Colorado and we were gonna climb a big I think it was like thirteen five hundred foot mountain and some guy, some like hippie in a van was like, yeah, man, be careful going up there.

01:07:04
Speaker 2: Every day around two pm there’s pop up storms.

01:07:08
Speaker 5: And we were just like, yo, cool, and we went and did it anyway, and got to the tree line about two pm and a big pop up storm came and we were gonna we didn’t go. We stopped there and we actually just hunkered under a tree because we were like, boy, was that a mistake exactly.

01:07:26
Speaker 4: I think the pop up storms are probably more dangerous because I like, if I saw on my radar that morning one hundred percent chance and lightning, I wouldn’t have went. I would have waited for the next day. So I think the pop up concept of storms can make it more dangerous because you’re not really thinking about it possibly happening.

01:07:41
Speaker 3: A life lesson from that is always listened to the hippies.

01:07:44
Speaker 1: Yes, speaking of hippies, I just noticed, Josh, you have a beautiful bracelet.

01:07:50
Speaker 3: My wife had that made for me. For my twenty sixth anniversary.

01:07:53
Speaker 4: No, nice, really is it?

01:07:56
Speaker 1: It’s copper and turquoise.

01:07:57
Speaker 3: But copper turquoise and there’s some last.

01:07:59
Speaker 1: Does it have any of these?

01:08:00
Speaker 4: Uh?

01:08:01
Speaker 3: You know it’s got it’s got organ knite in it so it keeps my chie in the line. No, I’m just.

01:08:09
Speaker 1: Kidding, man.

01:08:10
Speaker 5: Speaking of hippies, I was in California the other day surfing.

01:08:15
Speaker 1: Wait, oh wow, that is a great story.

01:08:17
Speaker 5: And some guy, some guy comes up to me and he has U and he was telling me about the power of his bracelets and like he did it. He’s like a surfer, and he like made us all do like a test where like you sent on one foot and he like pushes down over and then he like sprays this water on your hands and and then you don’t tip over.

01:08:39
Speaker 1: He’s got a weird did you pray after this?

01:08:41
Speaker 5: I was gonna say, I mean, I just I’ve got power over anything like that.

01:08:46
Speaker 2: I’m not too worried about it.

01:08:48
Speaker 1: Is okay, your bracelet’s give you that power. You have bracelets too, buddy. No. I thought it was funny though, because because we were like, this is just.

01:08:56
Speaker 3: Makes me look super cool.

01:08:58
Speaker 4: It’s working.

01:08:59
Speaker 1: It does Josh, it does it looks good?

01:09:03
Speaker 2: Yeah.

01:09:03
Speaker 1: We didn’t know what the deal was.

01:09:04
Speaker 5: And he was like, We’re like how what what’s the deal And he was like, well, it’s these bracelets right here.

01:09:10
Speaker 3: M hm were they? What were the man out of?

01:09:13
Speaker 5: It was like silver or something. I can’t remember, or maybe you said like silver shorts out your body. I can’t remember, man, it was it was.

01:09:23
Speaker 1: I’m low on jewelry except a wedding ring. I don’t have any other jewelry.

01:09:28
Speaker 3: I was with Clay the day that he lost his original wedding ring trying to pull an armadillo out of a hole.

01:09:35
Speaker 1: True. Yeah, my original wedding ring is out in the It was Ark National Forests.

01:09:40
Speaker 2: To this day.

01:09:41
Speaker 1: One day, Archie, I’ll just dig up and they’ll be like, who who was this?

01:09:46
Speaker 3: And they’ll get leprosy from it from the armadillo.

01:09:49
Speaker 1: Maybe. Well, this has been exciting, very electric. This has been an electric conversation. Definitely, any anything else, John, anything else? Appreciate you sharing your story. Appreciate it.

01:10:03
Speaker 3: Yeah.

01:10:04
Speaker 4: Yeah, Excited for another bear season, hopefully get some redemption.

01:10:08
Speaker 1: Are you going to bear hunt this year?

01:10:09
Speaker 4: Yeah, I’m gonna.

01:10:11
Speaker 1: We’re all going to start baiting. It’s next week, going Tuesday, Yeah, Tuesday, okay.

01:10:15
Speaker 4: Yeah, because I’m a little funny thing that happened in the hospital. My phone finally started working. The service came back and everything was working, and I was I just kept telling Chelsea, my wife. I was like, can I my phone? Can I my phone? And She’s like, oh, don’t worry, don’t do anything, like I’ll call your parents. I was like, no, I want to check my trail camera. That thing came in. I’m going to be very very angry it didn’t.

01:10:37
Speaker 1: He didn’t come in.

01:10:38
Speaker 4: Now, he never came back daylighted the rest of the season, so I technically.

01:10:41
Speaker 1: Didn’t I was he there the day before season to the fifteenth was the last and season started on the seventeenth.

01:10:47
Speaker 4: This was the eighteenth.

01:10:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was That’s basically what happened to arbar.

01:10:52
Speaker 4: It was a big tease and because I mean, I mean, I wasn’t getting too arrogant with it, but I was like, Okay, this might be the year, and but maybe it’s this year. Maybe if I put less effort into it and think about it less and obsessed, is the year.

01:11:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is the year. If not got a good season open.

01:11:06
Speaker 4: No lightning. It’s a good year, I guess, just getting back out in the woods and having fun out there.

01:11:10
Speaker 1: You can be in the same spot pretty much. Yeah, same tree. Uh yeah, I think lightning never strikes the same tree.

01:11:16
Speaker 4: Yes, all stick in the same tree.

01:11:18
Speaker 1: You could ride out of the understorms.

01:11:20
Speaker 4: Yeah, I might chop at the half top the top man, I would.

01:11:23
Speaker 1: I would be willing to bet my life that you could ride out a thunderstorm in that same tree.

01:11:28
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, I think I will.

01:11:30
Speaker 1: I think he will.

01:11:30
Speaker 3: He’d be willing to bet his life, I said, my.

01:11:33
Speaker 1: Life, But I want to be afraid that I’d be willing to bet your life.

01:11:36
Speaker 4: You could probably won’t even get down next time.

01:11:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, Oh you should get down, John, just get down, you should get down. Well all right, well, uh this was a fun, fun little Thank you for having me fun little deal here. I learned a lot about lightning. Man. Who knows what’s going to happen next on Bear Grease. But I continue to build out all my stuff for the book. Book is rapidly progressing. We’re working on the looking forward to that cover. We’re working on blurbs, getting people to there’s a whole bunch of stuff that happens after you’re finished. That’s interesting. So it’s coming up. I’m going to talk about it. Jas Houtellus tells me to talk about the book every episode. So American Bear coming out February ninth, twenty twenty seven.

01:12:32
Speaker 3: February ninth, that’s the release date.

01:12:35
Speaker 4: Yep, sweet, we’ll get two copies. I’m gonna get one for my son.

01:12:38
Speaker 1: There you go.

01:12:38
Speaker 4: Hunter Matthew born on father to Day. Really yeah, just recent yeah.

01:12:43
Speaker 1: Hunter Matthews. Yeap, Oh that’s great man.

01:12:46
Speaker 4: Cool, these are a little blessing.

01:12:48
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, we didn’t even talk about you hearing the baby crying.

01:12:53
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was a cool, kind of a an interesting part of it because I sometimes get emotional with it. But yeah, it was like five days later I just remembered, like, what was that? What woke me up? And I mean, you got kids that distinct like newborn cry. It’s not like what you see in the movies or when you have like six months old cry. Yeah, and yeah, we were kind of, I don’t want to say, battling infertility. But it took us around ten months and it was a little frustrating and a kind of stressful time in our life. And then yeah, so September eighteenth, it was like early October. I remembered about the crime, but didn’t really think about it. I had a brother that passed as a newborn, and my mom’s always said like he’s with you, and he’s always, you know, watching over you. So I kind of thought maybe was my brother. But then she called me frantic. She’s like, we’re pregnant, and she did. We did like three or four tests that day, and then I.

01:13:44
Speaker 1: Remember this is like a couple of weeks after.

01:13:47
Speaker 4: Yeah, so it was right around, yeah, the first week of October we found out, so there’s a chance she was pregnant, you know, at that actual you know, September eighteenth or it was pretty close after that, and I made it a crew joke, but I had to cancel a mule deer hunt for October first, and I was like, if I can’t go in this hunt with my buddies, we’re gonna try to get this baby thing going. But uh but yeah, so then you know, fast forward, like I have family and friends make a joke that you know, the lightning kind of got me uh ale again, and maybe I can write a book about you know, wise tales of lightning strikes.

01:14:21
Speaker 3: If it doesn’t make you able to call down rain, maybe it fixes him for two Yeah.

01:14:24
Speaker 1: Well yeah it sounds like it.

01:14:26
Speaker 4: And then yeah, Father’s Day. She goes into labor and that the nurses kept asking me like, oh, you queasy around blood and everything. I’m like no, no, no, like a you know, been around it. And then but that moment he came out and I heard that cry, it just sent like chills down my body because it was like the exact distinct newborn cry because I’ve never heard a newborn cry. My first first kid. I’m you know, don’t have any nieces or nephew, so it was it was a cool part. Don’t really know all about it. I mean, I believe in a higher power, but it was definitely maybe he was looking after me, so yeah, it was pretty cool.

01:14:57
Speaker 1: That is That is all right. Thanks everybody, keep the wild places wild because that’s where the barge will live.

01:15:04
Speaker 4: Awesome, thank you for having me.